To see or not to see...

An update on Nora... 

Well, we have finally found out what exactly is wrong with Nora's eyes and continued deterioration in her sight.  We already knew she had "High Hyperopia" which is extreme farsightedness, but for someone her age, this is not normal.  For a few months now her Opthamologist has been wanting to do an "exam under anesthesia" to get a better look at both Retina.  We wanted to try some retinal scans (pictures) first to see if that would work, but after 3 tries we realized asking a three year old to hold still for that long while they try to take pictures of the back of her eyes was near to impossible.  So we ended up going in on Thursday of last week to do the surgery.

The procedure didn't take long and Nora was awesome the whole time.  She was so brave when they had to put the painful drops in her eyes to make her pupils dialate and she did everything the nurses asked her to do.  I was very proud of her.  We had done a lot of prepping beforehand which I think helped ease her with what was going on.

As Nora was waking up, Dr. Abrams came in and took a seat.  He let out a long sigh and said: "Here's the situation."  My heart sunk, -- Oh great! Whenever a Doctor says that, you know something's up.  He told us that he was hoping to find nothing, but actually found what he suspected.....  He found macular folds in her foveal avascular zones.  WHAT???  Basically what it means is Nora’s eyes are small. The Sclera or Choroid (rim around the eyeball) has been shrinking over the past couple of years instead of expanding. Either that, or it has stayed the same and the retina and Vitreous humour have been growing. Either way, there is a fold in the retina right on the fovea. This is causing the focal point or area of the eye that is used for focusing (and letting light through) to fall off the center of the fovea. This causes the vision acuity to be really off from nominal.  In other words, her legally blind vision will never improve as she ages (there went all hope in that option).

With the retinal folds hampering her vision, she will probably always have to wear the heavy glasses, and even then still not see well (she has Tunnel Vision pretty bad).  The good news (if you want to call it that), is her vision will probably not get any worse from here on out.  The bad news, is that this condition is extremely rare.  Dr. Abrams said in all his years of practice he has only seen this one other time.  Dave asked if we could do some research on it ourselves and learn more about it and his reply was, "Well, there's not a lot out there, but here is one article that I know of that has been printed about it."  That's right, ONE lousy little article!?  Dr. Abrams is hopeful and wants to attempt doing a surgery on her to cut out the folds and fuse together the two ends together (kind of like a tummy tuck on a microscopic level).  The problem is that he has never done this surgery before and doesn't know if it will even work?  He also wants to do it within the year before the eye tissues get any more "tough" to work with.

So, you might ask: "Well, just get another Doctor that has done the surgery to do it"... That is a big problem too, because most Opthamologists are in Dr. Abrams place, they haven't seen this condition much either let alone attempted a novel surgery to fix it.  Can you just feel my blood pressure rising right now?  It's a huge risk.... Do you allow your little girl to go through something like this in order for her to see better?  Or do you continue to let her wear these huge bottlecap glasses that don't really help much anyway.  I can't tell you how many times a day Nora falls down or trips on something or hits her head (or face) on a counter or door because she just didn't see it.  As a mother I would love for her to be able to see BETTER with or without glasses.  But how far am I willing to go?