I Can See Clearly Now...

It's hard to believe that is has been almost a year since Hunter received his glasses. I will never forget the day he got them. They looked so foreign on his little face. He looked like a different boy and I hardly recognized him. We drove away from the eye doctor and he exclaimed, "Wow! Everything is so much bigger!" We had no clue he needed glasses let alone that his vision was pretty much horrible. Especially in his right eye. Our eye doctor wanted to do a follow up with him in a month. The day he got his glasses, he was seeing 20/200 out of his right eye! It is amazing to me that he was able to function in the real world without his glasses. He literally had everyone fooled that he had perfect vision. A month had passed and there was little improvement. We tried patching, but that didn't work. We even bought a special patch that would go over his lens to help build the right eye stronger. He hated it. He cried while he wore it. It itched, it felt weird, it was hard to see, everything was blurry. So, we went to plan B and did eye drops that would make his left eye blurry. The problem was that it was blurry for 1-2 days. It wasn't ideal, but we did what we had to do. As the monthly appointments went by we saw major improvements. After two months he was seeing 20/80. Time passed and four months ago he had stalled out at 20/40. There had been no improvement in over 3 months. Our eye doctor was still hopeful that things could change because we caught it at the perfect age, but she also told me that it may not be correctable. My heart kind of sank, but yet was happy at how far he had come. She said we were doing the right things and it may just need time. The good news was that he would still be able to drive, hunt, etc. The bad news was that if the eye became weaker, he would no longer be able to do those things. We didn't tell him that part though. Could you imagine how much that would crush all of his dreams?? Well today we went to the eye doctor. Our first time in 4 months. There was a new optometrist there. I was kind of nervous because our previous one had so much patience with Hunter and would answer all of his questions about how this worked or what that button did or what if you moved this like this...you get the point. Then I saw the new optometrist. he looked like he was stressed and having a bad day and felt overwhelmed. In my head I thought, "Oh great. He will be so annoyed with Hunter and he just wants to move on to his next appointment." I guess the old saying holds true. You can't judge a book by a cover. He was great with Hunter! He hadn't had the time to look through his file that much, but I brought him up to date on what has gone on the past year. He did a thorough exam on Hunter and we found out that he is now seeing 20/30!!! He is determined to get Hunter to seeing perfectly and is amazed at how far Hunter has come in the past year. No more eye drops, or as Hunter likes to call it, the bee sting in his eye. And our next exam won't be until 6 months! But, if I know my son, we will be there in the next month or two with a popped out lens or crooked glasses that need to be adjusted. And the glasses don't look so foreign anymore. They are a part of his look. If anything, he looks weird without them. Funny how things change :)