Eye doctor

A couple of weeks ago Tatum had an eye appointment. An eye appointment with a family optometrist, ophthalmologist? I don't know...it was an eye doctor. This eye doctor had no idea how to examine my daughter, though his website says he does pediatric eyes. Really? So when you had to call your mom in there to help put eye drops in my daughters eyes, that means you know what your doing? Oh, yes his mom works there, not sure what she does, but she works there. One of Tatum's eyes crosses in as an attempt to see more clearly up close. I'm not sure what this is called, they told me once, but it's a medical term that's in some other language. She wears glasses that are a +5 or so prescription, thats strong enough to be considered a magnifying glass. So as the doctor is examining her eyes with the doohickey that has a million lenses on it, he proceeds to ask her if the picture of the house looks better this way, or that? Now how does he think that asking a 3 year old which house picture looks better is going to accomplish anything? All the pictures look better to her, now go use your briefcase full of glasses like a real pediatric eye doctor would do. After all this nonsense he tries to tell me that she needs surgery, eye surgery. The thought of someone operating on my daughter's eye scares the crap out of me. This is a pass fail kind of operation, she would either come out and no longer have the crossed eye, or she comes out with no vision. I may sound mean, but at this point I would rather her have to wear glasses for the rest of her life. She has to wear a patch on her “good eye” every day for a minimum of 4 hours a day. We call this her pirate patch and she's been doing pretty good with it. I still want to know why a box of these patches cost $25! They are basically eye shaped band aids.

So we got her new glasses(3rd or 5th pair since she started wearing glasses) and I think these are keepers. They aren't huge like the ones in the picture and they don't make her eyes look huge. Oh also, she doesn't know this yet but they turn in to sunglasses when she goes outside. Transitions were a good idea when you think about what a magnifying glass is capable of in the sun... She wears her glasses all the time now and seems to know that they help her to see much better. I look at her and think back to my childhood and how some of the kids with glasses were made fun of in school. I think to myself, not my daughter, she is strong, she will stay strong.