Anisometropia

At the end of April a group from the University of Iowa Children's Hospital called 'KidVision' went to Evaline and Cora's daycare and did a vision screening on all the kids who hadn't had one previously.  This meant that they did not test Cora's eyes, since she was already in glasses, but they did test Evaline's.   When they got home from school that day, Evaline proudly showed us her sticker (that she got, but Cora didn't), and Cora proudly told us that Evaline had failed the test.  We promptly blew off Cora's comment as something that she was saying either a) incorrectly, or b) to be mean because she didn't get a sticker but Evaline did.  Also, when they'd been to their pediatrician in November Evaline did perfectly fine on the "stand on the masking tape and tell me if you can see this picture at the end of the hall" test.

Towards the middle/end of May, we got the official results of the screening, and found that Evaline did, in fact, fail one of the tests and she was recommended to see an eye doctor to confirm the results and get treatment if needed.

As it turns out, Evaline has an uncommon eye condition called "Anisometropia."  While this is an uncommon condition, it isn't all that uncommon for preemie babies.  Although Evaline was born at 37 weeks and was healthy and didn't need to the NICU or anything, and although Cora was not given this label, Evaline was named a "preemie" when she was born; I'm sure due to something developmental, and probably the fact that she was 4 lbs, 4oz at birth (and, she looked kinda funny....sorta like an anorexic bird...in the cutest way possible, of course).

Ok, so "Anisometropia": basically her left eye sees just fine.  Almost 20/20 vision.  Her right eye is near-sighted.  Not terribly near-sighted (nothing like Cora's eyes), but that doesn't really matter.  The brain doesn't like to get this mixed message.  It has a hard time dealing with one eye seeing clearly and one eye seeing blurry; so it is shutting off the message from the right (blurry) eye.  There isn't anything wrong with the eye itself (except for the near-sightedness), but she's going blind in her right eye.  The receptors between the eye and brain are shutting down because the brain finds the mixed messages to be obnoxious.

Yikes!!

Fortunately, if its caught early enough (like, before age 9ish) it is something that can be corrected and the brain will reconnect with that eye.  The first thing to try is glasses, which we picked up this morning.  Hopefully, the glasses alone will correct this: presenting the brain with two clear messages will strengthen those receptors and restore any lost vision.  We go back in early August to see if it worked or not.  If not, she will have to wear an eye patch over her left (good) eye for awhile to force the brain to use her right (bad) eye.  With any luck, though, she won't need that.

So both the twins are in glasses by the age of four.  Oy.  Evaline was ecstatic - she has been so terribly jealous of Cora's glasses for the past year and a half.

And here she is...