The Downside To Genetics

Unfortunately for my children, they have each inherited some unfortunate traits along with all the good stuff they gleaned during the crazy game of genetics. Daniel and Matthew got the allergies and asthma. Nathan has inherited a serious ability to manipulate Daniel into cleaning up all the toys. Matthew is an OCD baby who can't stand to have his teeth brushed if the medicine cabinet is still open. Daniel is too smart, leading to the thought that if it is hard it must not be worth doing. Matthew is a shorty. And Nathan inherited his eyesight from both Kev and I. His right eye is just like Kev and his left eye is all me.

During his five year checkup back in May, we discovered that Nathan's vision in his left eye is blurry. He read the reading chart just fine with his right, but his left eye couldn't discern much of anything. So our doctor recommended we take him to the eye doctor and his nurse gave us the name of a pediatric ophthalmologist. This particular eye doctor is very busy (Doesn't it seem like the best ones always are?) and the soonest we could see him was August. So today, after this morning's lactastrophe, Kev took Nathan to the eye doctor.

It turns out that the vision in Nathan's right eye is just fine (thank Kev for that), but in his left eye he is nearsighted and has astigmatism (I'm so sorry, kid). Because his right eye is still strong, his brain compensated for his weak left eye, creating a bit of lazy eye as well. The official term is amblyopia, but who is ever going to remember that? The doctor told Kev this is the hardest kind for parents to catch because his weak eye isn't visibly doing anything strange. He also said that the eyes are still developing until about age 9, so we should be able to resolve the lazy eye part before Nathan reaches that point. I'm very grateful that we were clued into the problem early enough to be able to deal with it.

Nathan is actually really excited about getting glasses and a special glasses case to put them in. He is also completely aware of the fact that he may need to have an eye patch off and on for awhile. Perhaps I can convince him to be a pirate for Halloween . . .