Our family is now facing yet another challenge in 2012. From the day of his birth, DS2 has had oddly tracking eyes. Both of his eyes would just look to one extreme and stay there or he would look all around with each eye tracking differently never seeming to look right at something. I couldn’t get him to make eye contact for months. He is almost 7 months old.
We finally got to see the pediatric ophthalmologist. While the vision of each eye is on target, he has been diagnosed with Strabismus and Ocular Motor Apraxia (OMA).
Strabismus is a fairly common condition where your eyes don’t track together. It is one of the conditions that can result in a “lazy eye” but the two aren’t mutually exclusive. For my little man right now, he tracks the eyes separately and then one eye will focus on the object he is trying to see. We are watching him carefully to make sure one eye doesn’t always dominate over the other. If that is allowed to perpetuate, the non-dominate eye will loose function.
The other condition, OMA, is a very rare condition. His eyes have trouble with moving objects. If you call for him from the side, he will quickly move his head toward you but then he has trouble getting his eyes to look at you. He can only follow very slow moving objects.
Our pediatrician has now diagnosed him with hypotonia, low tone. He doesn’t flip over much, he cant sit up unassisted and he tires easily.
This week, we were able to meet with the county to determine if they can provide services for him. Our county assesses children with delays for free and then offers OT and PT services as needed on a sliding scale. We are waiting to hear if he qualifies and then we will have a second comprehensive assessment of his issues/skills with two experts on his challenges.
Next week we will be taking him to National Children’s Hospital to see a Pediatric Opto-neurologist to try and determine root cause.
It is difficult making sense of all this but I’m just working to make sure I can help him reach his greatest potential rather then morn the loss of what could have been. I already see the exceptional human that he is. He’s so happy and lights up the room with his smiles.