Somethings happened recently. I'm almost afraid to put it out there in universe for fear it might change. But I'm willing to take a risk as it's been a long hard journey thus far: We Are Patching.
It started out slowly. What used to be 10 minutes of thrashing and screaming and crying (by both Ruby and me) with her squinting the bad eye so that she wouldn't even open it, has now turned into what I'm calling a symbolic eye patch protest for about 3 minutes, and then it's like, uh. ok, the patch is on, let's go play.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still on her the entire time. I have to keep my eye on her and my hands have to be faster than her speed of light toddler hands. She seems to forget the patch is on if she's occupied and happy. But if she touches it, it's back to square one.
When we venture out of the house, I'm in the back seat with her, keeping her happy, keeping her occupied, keeping her from ripping the patch off in the car.
And when I get cocky and think I've got this imom thing down, and get her patched and the two of us head out. I hear a little bit of laughter coming from the backseat as she rips it off and waves it around. (OK, maybe she doesn't laugh on purpose but I feel like she does. Like look mama, I'm totally in control - no patch for me!)
We've been able to patch anywhere from 1 hour to 3.5 hours. I'm still aiming for a 4 hour goal which is still low for our 4-6 hour a day recommendation from our PO. But as my hubby keeps reminding me on days when I'm bummed about a 1 hour patch session, this is a huge step from where we were two weeks ago. And he's right.
We had a visit to her PO about two weeks ago. The visit went well (I didn't cry for the first time, so really, there's a victory there). But we had the hard talk again about being strong with the patch. And this time, I think Ruby heard her doctor. The very next day she patched for 30 minutes at daycare. I almost cried when her teacher told me about it at pick up. We were both so excited! And it's been at least 30 minutes a day ever since.
Tomorrow we head back for the second part of her appointment (sometimes her appointments are really long and we have to break them up.) We are getting a new lens with a prescription that's not as strong as her current one (hopefully it's in so we don't have to go back a third time) and her glaucoma test. Fingers crossed we get good results on that one! Children who've had a cataract removed are at a higher risk for developing glaucoma.
But for today, we'll keep up the patching battle and be happy with what we have! Stay strong patchers! And stay strong imoms!
