"Learning to See"

 

 

 

Life is changing once again at the McNutt household.  Joyah received her glasses at the end of October and has loved them from the first time they were placed on her face.  It must have been an immediate help to her vision as she started pointing at everything and asking what “that” was all around her.  Joyah has never tried to take them off and has learned to say “glasses” as well. 

            With the addition of glasses also came the new stage of eye “patching” that we had to begin in order to help improve vision in her left eye.  We have to patch the “good eye” (Right eye) to hopefully get the “bad” left eye to turn more vision on.  She has a poor optic nerve in the left eye.  We were under the assumption that with glasses she would have good vision in her “bad eye” and with patching it would just improve.  That has not been the case at all!           

            The first three days we “patched” Joyah she sat or stood in one spot crying and crying as she refused to open the un-patched eye to play or move around.  The eye doctor had asked us to “patch” her for 6 or more hours per day due to the severity of her case so you can imagine how terrible this was becoming.  On the fourth day, Joyah began to open the left eye but ran into walls, doors and tripped over everything on the floor.  We also noticed she was feeling for her food on her plate and feeling for toys on the floor.  This “patching” therapy revealed that she is very blind in her left eye and that glasses do nothing to help that eye. 

            Due to the extreme vision difficulty that even the doctors didn’t realize, they have now allowed us to “patch” for 3 hours per day.  This gives Joyah more time without the patch in which she can actually see to work on her speech, occupational and physical therapy exercises.  As you can imagine, you can’t learn eye-hand coordination if you can’t see. 

            After realizing the depth of Joyah’s visual deficits, Joyah will now be receiving services from The Children’s Center for Visually Impaired (CCVI) in order to help her learn to “see”, the best way she can.  This means helping her to be safe when walking by teaching her to scan her environment better and by teaching her to use the vision she has to accomplish tasks, like puzzles and stacking blocks etc.  We are praying that this new sight-centered therapy will help her advance more quickly with her current deficiencies.

            As we continue to discover more of the “layers” of Joyah’s health, we are thankful that the Lord has allowed us to do so at such a young age.  The opportunities that Joyah has access to are endless and amazing.  We are so thankful for these opportunities as they continue to help Joyah become a beautiful, talented and strong young lady.