More Questions

We took Lily Belle to Duke last week for her eye appointment. We have now visited and contributed money to ALL major hospitals in our area (Rex, Wake, UNC, Duke!) While we are very happy to have all these hospitals within our reach we're a little sick of them taking all our money! And seriously, I swear there is a UNC bill in our mailbox everyday.

Anyway, The point is, Duke Eye Center in Raleigh is awesome. It's new, clean, the staff is friendly. The doctor that was assigned to us was young, very sweet and listened to me. She also thought Lily was the cutest thing (duh!) and that she was very advanced. Seriously, Lily walked into the exam room, with her eyes dilated, glasses off and saw a big "B" on the exam screen and yelled out "B!!!" Our doctor was blown away ;-)

I waited to write this blog entry because we still have so many more questions for our doctor. I'm still waiting to actually talk to her but someone from Duke called me today and at least answered one question for me.

We're a little apprehensive about the results of Duke's eye exam. The doctor agreed that Lily uses both her eyes, and definitely focuses with separate eyes at different times. But she says that Lily's left eye is the strongest one and that if we are going to patch again, which we probably will after a check up in two months, we will be patching the left (and not the right like we previously did...for 3 months!) Dennis and I aren't so sure about this. Dennis cut a hole in the "castle" and Lily looks through it with her right eye every time. Maybe we can get our visual therapist to come back out and look again.
They also did the baby acuity tests which I was so excited about! The doctor said, based on that test, that she has at least 20/200 in both eyes. Our visual therapist at GMP says that she thinks Lily's eye sight is better than that and it's hard to tell with babies so we're hoping things will get better as she gets older. The BIG question was, did they do the acuity test with or without her glasses? I swear they did it with them on, and the doctor that called today said they usually do it with them on and according to the notes, yes they did it with her glasses on.

SO. This is a big deal for us. According to SSI we can get disability if her eyesight is 20/200 (yes, this is legally blind, and yes that's a sharp blow to my heart...but it is what it is) WITH glasses. If this is the case, we want our doctor to write a letter for us right away so we can file again. We also looked up some more SSI crap, again, and found that there is new conditions that you can file for - specifically, endocrine issues. This just started last month so we're excited by it! We're going to get everything together again and try to refile. According to the endocrine disabilities, well, Lily has ALL of it so I don't see how they can dare deny us for a third time.

I'll update more as I find out more about Lily's eyes. Hopefully I hear back from the doctor by Friday!