In the interest of resolving an argument I recently had, which is more disturbing: seeing a person with an eyepatch or seeing a person with a lazy eye? And why?
A person with a lazy eye. For one thing you don’t know which eye to talk to, but more important the person will always have a lazy eye. Those persons wearing a patch with eventually be cured and stop wearing the patch. Our grandson wears corrective glasses and I have no idea why one person would wear glasses and another a patch. 
I wouldn’t say disturbing, but a lazy eye would be more distracting.
Plus, eye patches are awesome. 
Definitely the lazy eye. If they wore a patch I’d wonder what they were hiding, but if they had lazy eye I would KNOW.
I believe it has to do with the nature & severity of the lazy eye (amblyopia, strabismus, esotropia, exotropia, etc). Some will respond to eye patches, some to corrective lenses and some only to surgery.
Further question: would you be more willing to talk to a person with an eyepatch about their eye?
My daughter had “lazy eye” when she was in grade school and was required to wear both an eye patch and thick glasses. The eye patch covered up the “good” eye to force the other one to do the work, and the glasses gave correction so that the “bad” eye could see well enough to be useful.
Fortunately, she has enough self-confidence and quick humor that this wasn’t a problem for her. One time a classmate tried to poke fun at her by calling her “Four Eyes,” and she shot back, “Dummy, there’s only three!” 
After a few years, the therapy did it’s work, and she now has normal vision in both eyes.
Lazy eye.
Because there’s a very good chance that that person has amblyopia (perceptual blindness in one eye) from improper treatment of the squint as a child, and that’s just a horribly sad thing to be allowed to occur.
Aw, don’t feel sad for me irishgirl, my life is pretty good!
As a kid I was diagnosed with ‘lazy eye’ but never really understood the term. I always figured it meant I had one eye that was significantly worse at focusing than the other until I started looking up the terms in this thread.
But an eye that isn’t straight is a lazy eye? I call that walleye-- my grandfather had one, as does one of my good friends.
Anyway, at 5 years of age I had to wear glasses and a patch. I hated that patch. Stupid adhesive itched. I couldn’t read with the one eye I was allowed to see with. And nobody told me why I had to wear the stupid thing. It was always just “wear the patch so you can see better,” when I damn well *couldn’t * see.
As a result I kept peeling off the patch and peeking through a corner of it so I could read. My teacher noticed, but never mentioned anything to my parents until the end of the year. After a year they stopped trying to make me wear the patch. (Note to parents/eye doctors: When a five year old asks why he has to wear something stupid that’s gonna get him teased, offer a full explanation!)
The end result: My right eye is a degree or two off straight. Nobody notices, not even an opthamologist unless they’re vigorously checking. I also have a lack of visual acuity in my right eye, which I now know is amblyopia.
Ah…Walleye/Lazy eye confusion abounds!
If someone has an obvious squint, or “walleye” to you and “lazy eye” to me, (about 95% of people, me included, have a latent squint) then you’re not talking about a bit of blurred vision you’re probably talking about complete blindness in that eye from amblyopia…and THAT’S sad.
Patching only works before the age of 10, and the rule of thumb is one week of patching for every year of the child’s age will cure the squint. So that’s why it’s sad if it isn’t fixed, as it’s an easily correctable condition.
Even if the visual defect isn’t correctable, squint surgery would probably correct the cosmetic problem, and that’s a simple and safe procedure too.
If it helps correct something, patch it up. Otherwise, who cares? I have a bar-buddy with a lazy eye. After a few brews, they both look straight to me.
I wore an eye patch for two years as a kid. Amblyopia is really a brain issue triggered by an eye issue: if the eyes are crossed, wall-eyed, etc., the brain has to resolve two conflicting images. After a while it learns to ignore the weaker one, causing either atrophy or some cognitive equivalent of it (I don’t remember) in the visual center of the brain corresponding to the weaker eye. I was told then that I would have been completely blind in my bad eye by age 7 f they hadn’t caught it.
I had plenty of self-esteem issues in childhood - this was only one of them. But I can at least see out of both eyes reasonably well, 40 years later.
Short answer: screw the aesthetics; get it cured.
Hi, my name is Lightnin’, and I’ve got amblyopia.
[SUB]What the hell’s “amble opie”?[/SUB]
It means “lazy eye”.
[SUB]Hi, Lightnin’![/SUB]
I wore the patch for a while when I was a kid. I hated that damn thing. If it had been a cool pirate eye patch, that would’ve been okay… but NOOOO, it had to be a bandage-looking geek patch. Still, though, I wore it despite the headaches and eyestrain it induced… and it didn’t do a lick of good.
My opthalmaloogis… opthol… optimuall… eye doctor was really impressed with how much control I have over the eye- most people are unaware that I’ve even got a lazy eye. I don’t have any depth perception, though, and I’m effectively blind in that eye.
I really wish the patch had done me some good.
Me with amblyopia—> :smack:
I had amblyopia as a child, but they gave me a little plastic cover that just hooked over the top of one lens of my glasses.
I’m mostly better now, but I’m told I will never see those 3D stereogram thingies without surgery. And THAT AIN’T HAPPENIN’.
Lightnin’, if you can detect light or movement with your bad eye, you can probably give some credit to that patch.
I had the same problem and wore glasses and a patch from the age of fourteen months. I can still remember peeping around the corners of the path. Finally it got a tiny hole on the good side and I knew to keep my mouth shut about it.
I can detect light and movement out of the bad eye and it does make some difference, but depth perception is a mess. (I drive by ear, know what I mean?)
Tom Selleck has a lazy eye. Anyone notice?
I have lazy eye that is probably the result of wearing a patch.
I had a serious eye injury in the fourth grade, which resulted in part of the iris being detached from the sclera. The injury was not treated for several days after it happened (I was at summer camp at the time), so by the time my parents got me to a doctor, there was a severe infection in the injured eye, and the doctor was afraid that the infection could travel to the other eye, and that I could lose vision in at least one eye. I was hospitalized for several days with both eyes patched, to try to reduce eye movement in the injured eye and prevent further damage and infection. After I was released from the hospital, I had to wear a patch (a metal shield that was attached with medical tape, not a pirate patch at all) for about six weeks over the injured eye.
Shortly after my eye was declared “healed” (although I still have a large gap between the iris and the sclera in that eye), I started having severe problems with double vision. I did exercises, and eventually got it under control for the most part. It has recurred during stressful periods, and almost always happens if I am reading text in a book.
I was actually not diagnosed with “lazy eye” until I was in grad school, when I went to the optometry school there to have my glasses updated, and I told the resident who saw me that I frequently had problems with double vision. They did extensive testing, and determined that my left eye was “lazy,” meaning that it could (and did) shut itself off if my brain couldn’t reconcile the two images from my eyes into one image. However, it was my right eye that had the injury, which resulted in a second pupil in that eye, since the opening between the iris and sclera let light through to the retina, just like a normal pupil does.
They said that the only reason I still had use of my left (lazy) eye at all was because of the fact that I frequently had to close my right eye to block out excess light, especially sunlight. When I closed my right eye, my left eye would “wake up” and take over, even if I didn’t use it very much otherwise.
I did serious number of hours working on correcting the lazy eye and the double vision, but it hasn’t helped much. I still see double a considerable amount of the time when both eyes are “on,” but I do have more control over when each eye is
“on” or “off”, to the point that I can almost consciously choose which eye I want to use at any given time. (When I read printed material, I HAVE to close one eye, but I try to alternate them so that neither of them completely gives up.)
I now use a “patch” on a regular basis, with the “patch” being just the fact that I walk around with one eye closed, especially if I am tired, or if I am in especially bright light. Part of me wants to buy a costume pirate patch, though, and confuse people by moving the patch from the left eye to the right at my own whims. 
I’m not entirely sure what my eye problem was at a child, but I had more than enough to choose from. I knew I had whatever the condition where one eye ‘drifts’ - I’d focus on something, but my right eye would be pointed in the wrong direction. I had surgery as an infant to correct this (I think), but it apparently didn’t work, because I had the same surgery again when I was six or something.
I also had to wear an eye patch for a long time - I don’t think I ever actually had to wear it to school, but it went on the second I got home and didn’t come off until bedtime, regardless of if there was an Important Social Event or something. I hated it with a passion, and have no idea what it was meant to correct. This was also around the time I got glasses, because I couldn’t manage to BS my way through eye exams anymore.
There’s still a huge difference in the corrective perscription between my ‘good’ and ‘bad’ eyes, and my ‘bad’ eye still occasionally drifts a bit - so, thousands of dollars in visits to ophthamologists, two horribly unpleasant, traumatic and apparently poorly-done invasive operations, and about a year of social trauma apparently didn’t do squat. I have practically no depth perception (just watch me try to thread a needle), can’t see those stupid “magic eye” posters, am functionally blind without sickeningly-expensive lenses, and was told over the summer I might need surgery again in a year or so (as if I’d go through that hell willingly…).
Not that I’m, you know, bitter or anything. Some people can fix the problem by wearing glasses?!
Patching both eyes is bad.
Patching one eye all the time is bad.
Patching one eye for most of the time for too long is bad.
Patching one eye for most of the time for not long enough is bad.
Squint surgery before the child’s ocular muscles and eyeball have stopped growing is bad.
Basically, the examples from Kiminy, NinjaChick,** Zoe** and Lightnin’ show how bad management is sometimes worse than no management.
But good management of squints…boy is that worthwhile!
I did my Opthalmology rotation at the Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin, and those guys know what they’re doing. Children with squints are assessed every 2weeks-2months (depending on the severity of the problem and the age of the child) by an orthoptist and an opthalmologist, and they have great results.
Ivygirl had amblyopia, but not a lazy eye. One eye was more farsighted than the other, and I was told that she would eventually go blind in that eye because her brain would refuse to process the signals.
She had to wear a patch (not a black pirate one, but a beige colored bandage thing, it came with animal stickers for decoration) after school for several hours for about a year or so. She needs glasses, but her eyesight is much improved.
Eyepatches on children are treatment. After about age 9, the damage is irreversible without surgery.
I had what they called wall eye as a child and had to wear a patch and glasses. Unlike FatBaldGuy’s daughter, I had no self-confidence and was already a hideous child and constantly tormented, so the patch was a horrible period of torture for me.
Anyhoo, it didn’t correct anything and I’ve always had very weak vision in my left eye. I can barely see anything far away (for instance, if I’m driving and close my right eye, I can barely if at all read the road signs). I have glasses for distance but the right lens is just glass and the left one is about an inch thick, so my left eye is greatly shrunken and it really looks funny. I hardly ever wear them.
If I close my right eye, the quality of vision from my left is weird. Everything seems a little darker and blurry and there’s almost like a dark line or shadow down the middle of my eye. If I concentrate on not moving my left eye at all, eventually the dark shadow “grows” to completely cover the right half of my left eye’s field of vision so that it’s totally black. This dissipates if I move the eyeball around, down to just being the “line” right in the middle. I had an extremely strong squint as a child – had it all the time; all my pictures are ruined from it – and even now I am very very sensitive to light and my left eye still squints at just being in regular daylight.
Sometimes I deliberately close my right eye just to give it a rest and in the thought that somehow maybe my left eye will “get better.” So am I just wasting time?