Lazy Eye and children: what have you seen help?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A regular checkup has led to the diagnosis of “lazy eye” and a recommendation of a fast visit to an ophthalmologist for my youngest boy. The appointment with the Dr is today & I have been trying to read as much as I can about it
to “get ahead of it” and to know what to expect.

Most of what I’ve read indicates that he is going to be in for a summer (and maybe longer?) of using an eye patch. He is a voracious reader and has completely read out his school library of several authors already… and if he keeps
this up with the eye patch I’m hoping this will correct itself by the end of the year. I’m worried that he might get tired more easily and find that as a disincentive to read. I know that Lots of Truly Brilliant and successful people have
beaten Amblyopia and I think he can do this if I encourage him the right way. After all, he’s the same kid who broke his elbow when he was 4 and had a 3 inch screw drilled through the middle of length of the joint in order to help him heal
(and drilled out after it was healed) with almost no complaint.

don’t try that at home, btw
I’m also worried that it might Not be simple Amblyopia, but I know that the what-ifs just cause ulcers at this point. So, why am I so worried? The same visit told us that he had two loose teeth that needed to come out on their on own or be removed…
and while I was typing this, he came in and told me one came out while he was eating breakfast.

“It’ll be my bagel-tooth. I’m going to put it in a box and put it under my pillow…” -just said 15 min ago

He’s also infectiously happy, p’owns grades, and has skipped my ‘ugly’ gene; he’s done everything right as a kid and I want to do everything right that I can for him as a Dad.

Anyway, if anyone here knows someone who went through this and found some exercises or activities that helped above/beyond just using the patch, I’d appreciate it if you would post them.

Thank You!

2

Our son was born with a squint - strabismus amblyopia. So a bit different to your son’s case but we’ve been through the patching, and for our lad needed glasses and eventual squint surgery.

In our case, the orthoptic people broke it down in two - there was the cosmetic appearance of the squint, which could be corrected at any age through surgery. And then there was the vision in the lazy eye, which needed to be worked on asap, as there is a window of opportunity to get the eye up to speed. After age 7-8, improvements in vision cannot be expected - or so it was explained to us.

We seemed to get on top of it in his first couple of years - patching and glasses from age 1. He never had a problem with it, probably patched for around 6 months continuous was enough, and then he had surgery when he was 3 (I think) - worked great, thank the Lord, so he seems to be on the right path with his eyes. He has 6 monthly visits to an orthoptic nurse to check vision - and we have to be diligent in keeping his glasses perscription up to date.
The only thing he seems impacted by is 3-D vision - he seems fine day to day, doing sports etc, but the nurse shows him pictures that look like magic eye drawings and he can’t see them. I can’t see them either, like, so I’m not sure what that means really.

How old is your son - that’s probably the most important parameter for successful lazy eye treatment.

3

I don’t remember the details because I was so young at the time but I had to do the eye patch for a while and then surgery and glasses afterword.
Fortunately I was still young enough to think the eyepatch thing was “cool”. Like a pirate or something.
Unfortunately, my lazy eye has returned in my middle age. But it only comes in phases.

4

Probably not much help, but I had a lazy eye when I was younger and my parents could not afford surgery. I ended up with glasses, but I developed the ability to use my eyes ‘independently’ and favored the non-lazy eye so that eye became stronger while the lazy eye became weaker. Around middle school age, and thanks to my grandmother, I had surgery to ‘straighten’ the lazy eye because it would be looking off to one side when I was supposed to be looking straight. Then many years later when I was in my 30’s (or it may have been my early '40’s) I had surgery on the lid to raise it up to where it belonged. Since then, the lid has started to droop again. I also still tend to favor my non-lazy eye.

5

I guess you could consider my post a warning on what not to do.

Also, IIRC I didn’t do any patches either.

6

Patient education basics for amblyopia. Probably nothing you don’t already know:

Feel free to email me if you want more technical stuff on treatment options. though I suspect your own doc has probably told you more.

Ralph Wiggum: “Then, the doctor told me that BOTH my eyes were lazy! And that’s why it was the best summer ever.”

7

I had a lazy eye as a child and wore an eyepatch for a while. I’m not sure it did much good. One eye continued to have much worse vision than the other, although over the years, the good eye “caught up”. At one point I was around 20/800 in the bad eye and 20/200 in the good eye, but my current prescription is 20/850 and 20/625. Fortunately I am correctable to 20/15, so as long as I wear my glasses I’m fine. It was certainly never a disincentive to read; I considered myself a voracious reader until I read the recent poll here and learned that 40 books a year puts me below the SDMB average.

The one issue I did have and continue to have is with perspective. I have been tested, and even with my glasses I am completely unable to judge distance. I can’t play any kind of sport that involves hitting or catching a ball, since it is never where I thought it would be. If I’m not careful, I also walk toward the side of my good eye (I usually make walking companions get on the bad eye side, otherwise I will tend to careen into them). I also have a bad habit of crashing into anything that is against a wall on my side – plants, architectural features, scaffolding, once even a horse.

I don’t really know, but I wonder if playing catch or other activities involving some hand-eye coordination at a distance might be useful in building up the ability to view perspective and preventing some of my issues later on.

8

I have a lazy eye.
Did patch, glasses, and some sort of surgery when very young.
I recall being very frustrated because I couldn’t see when wearing the patch.
The vision in my lazy eye remains near useless.

Growing up I developed a learned depth perception and played basketball, football, and baseball into high school. The lack of true depth perception probably hindered my abilities, but it didn’t particularly bother me.

My eye still gazes to the side , much worse when tired or drinking.
The only time I think about it is when trying to make eye contact farther than say 10 feet. The person I am looking at will turn their head and look behind them to see if I am looking at them or somebody else.

Ophthamologists used to get all excited when I would consciously “turn off” my good eye and “turn on” my bad eye.

Over all has not been very important to my quality of life.

Now that I’m older and don’t play ball games anymore, I’ve lost that false depth perception. Caught a softball with my face last year.

9

I was diagnosed with crossed eyes when I was really young, maybe 3 or so. I wore glasses for a while. My vision is now really affected when I’m tired. I’ve seen pictures of my aunt when she was a baby. Her eyes were just as crossed.

10

When I was around 7 I had weekly Saturday visits to an ophthalmologist, for several months and also had exercises to do at home. There were more of them than I remember. The two I do recall were

  1. I had a stick with 2 sets of lenses. This is the closest thing I’ve been able to find. Lemme 'splain. Imagine the straight handle was the equator, one pair of lenses was north, and the second pair was south. I was to read for ten minutes using north, and then right away ten minutes using south.

  2. My mom stuck a large screweye into her bedroom ceiling and hung a softball low enough that it would swing at me but not into me. She would swing the softball, sometimes in an arc, sometimes in a circle and I was to stay focused intently on it with both eyes even when it was hurtling towards my face. I don’t think we did this every night, but several times between each visit to Dr. Mayer. (The Dr. gave us this exercise. It’s not as if my mom decided on her own that lobbing things at my head would help.)

This was all to treat amblyopia without strabismus. I honestly do not remember any patching, but it’s possible that if it happened during summer break and I didn’t get teased over it I simply forgot.

I won’t tell you not to worry at all. It is your kid, after all. But try to go easier on yourself. You’re doing more than right by your kid.

11

late update

Thank you for the responses! I admit that I freaked from the moment I heard “you need to take him to an ophthalmologist” to the moment I heard “the Dr will see him now.”

It turned out to be better news than I thought & no surgery will be needed… just glasses & some exercises.
You guys are the Best! Thank You!
if a Mod could close this now, please? Thank you!