A Series of Almost-Big-Deals in the Life of Anlynn... So Far

Isn't this little thing just the sweetest?

Since even before she was born, life for Anlynn has been a series of almost big deals.  What do I mean?  Well, here's a list:

• During my pregnancy with Anlynn, I had spotting that we were told meant something truly tragic, but instead proved to be not that big of a deal.
• When Anlynn was 10 months old, x-rays indicated a tumor on her ovary: a huge deal.  But after extensive ultrasounds with a specialist, no tumor was found: another almost big deal.
• When she was 3 1/3, we learned that Anlynn was allergic to wheat.  That forced major life alterations, but thankfully was not a potentially lethal food allergy. Again: an almost big deal.

And now here we are again.  

Many of you know that Anlynn has had a real struggle with reading.  I was aware that she was behind "typical", but last year when Harrison, as a kindergartener, was surpassing her reading skills, I knew there was a serious problem.  Together we focused and worked really hard on phonics, word blends, sight word review, etc.  And over the course of last school year, Anlynn had made some huge strides.  However, there was still a significant delay.  As Harrison moved easily onto books with 4-6 sentences per page as a first grader, Anlynn was struggling through 1st grade level books as a 3rd grader.  We were both pretty discouraged.

After asking other moms and talking with a friend who is a resource teacher, I started to wonder about her eyes.  She's had regular eye exams and glasses since she was 5, but others were mentioning "tracking" issues.  We scheduled an appointment with a DO in Minden.  That was October 31st.

It was determined at that appointment that Anlynn's prescription was not accurate, that tracking was an issue, depth perception was a concern, and that bifocals was the next step.  One month with bifocals in the correct prescription and we were to go back.  We were told the prescription change was substantial enough that her eyes might not accept it, but being homeschooled was in her favor because she wouldn't have to deal with switching from seat work to board work all day (switching from her top lens to her bottom lens).

During the month, I started seeing some improvement with Anlynn's attitude during reading.  I witnessed a new interest in up-close activities.  And I was encouraged.  I was wrong.

We returned to the DO on December 6th.  Things had not improved.  We were referred to a pediatric eye specialist and set up an appointment for December 9th.

On December 9th, we went to Hastings for the appointment.  The doctor took Anlynn back alone...without me.  So I have no idea what types of tests he did.  When the evaluation was over, he sent Anlynn to the waiting room and called me back.

Her medical diagnosis is STRABISMUS.  (I stress "medical" because we don't have vision insurance, but this is not simply a vision problem, it's a medical diagnosis and able to be submitted to our health insurance.  It's not a big deal, I guess, but for a concerned Mama, it makes this feel graver.)

Strabismus is an eye turn.  Anlynn's left eye turns in slightly.  It is not easily detected cosmetically, but it has a huge impact on the way her eyes see and process information.  Normally, both eyes see the same things and work together to process that information.  With a severe eye turn (not Anlynn's kind) it would be a noticable cross-eye and the turned eye would suppress all information it gathered, deferring completely to the normal eye. 

In Anlynn's case, in some situations or circumstances, her left eye suppresses information completely.  In other situations it works with the right eye.  While it's good that she has SOME correlation between eyes, the information gathered from her left eye is skewed.  It's really difficult to correlate with what her right eye sees.  In essence, her brain and eyes work really hard sometimes to make the images from each eyes mash-up together.  Ultimately, Anlynn's depth perception is compromised.  While it's incredible that our brains can accommodate and adapt to these types of problems, it also means any recovery will be minimal, baring a true miracle.

So, what does this mean for Anlynn?  Thankfully, not much long term.  It shouldn't affect much in terms quality of life and life goals.  Collegiate level sports involving balls would be out.  You can probably guess that's not too upsetting for us.  Three-D movies won't be any fun.  Parallel parking will be a chore.

What does all this mean for Anlynn right now?  She has to spend a lot of her day doing very fine-detailed work.  Sometimes with a patch (to strengthen her left eye) and sometimes with both eyes (to force them to work together).  These types of activities include reading, writing, crafts, blocks, needlepoint, beading, word searches, circling all the "th"s in a magazine article, filling in the "o"s of a novel with a pencil.  Anything that is fine-detailed and causes her to eyes process information and make a decision based on that information.  The specialist seemed to think that Anlynn's eyes have not yet fully accepted the new prescription.  He said in some activities her eye muscles will relax and let the lenses help, but in other situations her eyes revert back to working too hard to do it alone.  So we are to continue all these table-top activities for two months and go back in February to re-evaluate.

So, here we are again with an "almost big deal" situation with Anlynn, that IS a big deal, even as it's not THAT big.  She is not blind.  We aren't looking at surgery.  Her future is pretty much as open as it was before (considering collegiate level sports with balls was never really an option we entertained for her anyway!). 

And yet.

And yet my Mama-heart aches for her. 

And yet I'm still going to ask God to do a big, mighty work to heal her.

And yet I'm still going to love and trust Him, even if He chooses not to miraculously align her eyes.

Pray with me, please?