Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label strabismus

Evie the pirate...for 30 minutes

Evie's eye turn has been getting a bit more pronounced. Her eyes switch off to turn in towards her nose most of the time.  This is called intermittent alternating esotropia (if they turned out, it would be exotropia).  My initial post about eyes is here . She also has huge epicanthal folds, which is basically the extra skin that covers the nasal corners of the eyes, and can make an eye turn, known as strabismus, look larger than it is. I was hoping she would grow out of it, but my observations were confirmed at her last ophthalmology visit.  The size of her eye turn had doubled in the last 8 months.   I could have brought prism bars home from work to measure them, but there's just something about doing an exam on your own kid--I am too biased and emotionally involved to do it myself. Here is Evie with an eye patch!  We are doing it every 30 minutes on her right eye, because her left eye is the one that turns in more often. If we teach the le...

First Eye Exam!

I am behind in blogging because I went back to work full-time 2 weeks ago.  But I can't not blog about Evie's first eye exam! It was fun to be on the parent side of things for an eye exam for once, since I am an optometrist.  I hope that in sharing Evie's experience, we can help other parents know what to expect. Kids with Down Syndrome should have a full eye exam around 6 months of age in order to look for certain vision findings that need to be caught early.  The main things to look for in a child with Down Syndrome would be: Amblyopia (Lazy Eye--decreased vision from abnormal visual development) Strabismus (Eye Turn--eyes usually cross in for kids with DS if they have an eye turn) Cataracts  Glaucoma  Nystagmus (shaking of the eyes) Blepharitis and Watery Eyes Keratoconus (changing of the corneal shape, usually in teenage years)  Need for glasses (either near-sighted or far-sighted) I decided to go to Boston Childrens for Evie's eye care...