Evan's Eyeballs

We went today for the first session of Evan's vision testing. So far the tests have been covered by our medical insurance, so we haven't made the leap to the financial comittment for therapy. He has to go back for three more one hour testing sessions (that's after today's FOUR HOUR session!!!) before Jeff and I sit down with the doctor for the full diagnosis, and the blow by blow about the cost.

Even so, we got soooo much information today that my head is spinning, and I hardly know where to start to tell you about it. She made an initial diagnosis of divergence excess, which is caused because the muscles around Evan's eyes aren't attached in the right places. Which means that when he is trying to look straight ahead, his eyeballs want to move to the outside of his eyesockets. In order for him to look straight ahead or focus on an object, it takes a tremendous effort for him to pull his eyes in and see straight. Not only has he been seeing double most of the time, but it takes too much of his concentration to move his eyes, making it very difficult to see words, or much less concentrate on understanding what he is reading. The doctor asked him if he often saw two of things, and he said "Of course I do! All the time!" I was HORRIFIED. I asked him why he hadn't told me, and he looked at me blankly and said, "I thought I was supposed to. Don't you?" I bawled right there in the doctors office. No wonder my baby can't read very well. How the heck can you do that when you see two of everything!! And sports which have always been torture for him? Which ball are you supposed to try to kick when you see two? She also mentioned he might feel like the ground is tilting because of his double vision. That would make it hard to run, wouldn't it? It explains his monster headaches after school-all that eye strain. I feel like someone has put the missing piece of the Evan jigsaw puzzle into place for me. Every issue we have been dealing with since he was a small toddler can be traced to this.

I feel SO. BAD. My kid, my precious little boy has seen double since he was very small. School has been hell for him, and no wonder.

What kills me is that insurance doesn't consider this a bad enough disability to cover treatment. We are going to have to dig deep to cover the cost of this, but how can we not? My baby can't see.