Monday, January 26, 2009

Eye Eye Captain

Erasmus once said, "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king", well, I am as blind as a doorpost and so was holding out much hope at Noah's recent eye test at St.Michael's House that he would at least be one-eyed and as such, the King of all around me. Noah is due in Crumlin Children's hospital in the next two weeks for a more detailed eye exam so this preliminary check-up would serve as an hors d'oeuvre for us to establish whether there were any major problems with Noah's eyes and as such, his sight.

The first task was for the doctor to apply some magic drops into each of Noah's peepers. They may have looked like ordinary eye drops, but the magic of this particular potion was that within a matter of minutes, they turned Noah's headlamps into something resembling the below...



After fifteen or so minutes and a rapidly expanding waiting room of overly wide-eyed children, we were taken back in for the assesment. Seeing the handheld light that the doctor was wielding and directing in his eyes, Noah clearly mistook this for a Vogue fashion shoot (or other such popular magazine, I'm not entirely down with what the kids are reading these days...) and duly posed over each shoulder much to the amusement of the doctor and particularly his Mummy and Daddy. To say he was a little charmer in the doctor's office would be to understate the sheer astonishing levels of flirting he managed to reach, Daddy was proud... ;o)

The doctor was pleased with how his eyes looked which was good news, she noted that there was the possibility of a slight turn in his right eye but only to come back in (earlier than his next appoinment in six months time) if we deemed it to be significantly noticeable. Having never noticed it in the first place, we were not overly concerned by this but will dutifully keep an eye on it so to speak. We both fully anticipate Noah having to wear glasses when he is older as the pair of us have to scrabble around for our specs first thing in the morning and so Noah will be doing considerably well to escape the clutches of our short-sightedness. Having Down Syndrome merely increases his already likely chances of having problems with his sight but in this instance, I personally think that he will be facing the same challenges as an extremely high majority of the population. Look around you at your peers, friends, family, colleagues etc and see who amongst them has perfect vision? Yes, some people are blessed with a perfect set of mince pies and all power to them but in a world where plain glass glasses (i.e. non-prescription glasses) are worn as fashion accessories, I don't think that poor eyesight carries the same social stigma that it perhaps once did. Maybe I'm wrong and just justifiying it for myself I don't know, but assuming that Noah has nothing more than short/long sightednesses to worry about I think we'll be ok on this one. On that note, I have included below a few links to some further information on the potential issues that persons with Down Syndrome may have with their vision, I would encourage you to take a few minutes out to browse through to see that there's potentially a lot more to it than reading letters off a chart on the wall...

http://www.dsmig.org.uk/library/articles/dsa-medical-series-6.pdf

http://www.cdadc.com/ds/eyesight-problems-treatment-and-down-syndrome.html

http://www.intellectualdisability.info/mental_phys_health/opthal_ds.htm

Stay tuned for the update from the Crumlin check-up and as they say round these parts, "I'll be talkin' to ya..."

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