Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Great News!
Yesterday I took Elijah for his second visit with Dr. Luisa Mayer at the New England Eye Low Vision Clinic at Perkins School for the Blind. Dr. Mayer is "an internationally recognized expert in visual field testing of children and individuals with multiple impairments." We were referred to Dr. Mayer back in August after Elijah's surgery. At that time, the doctors suspected that he had a right visual field loss as a result of the brain tumor and cysts squishing his occipital lobe on the left side. Although Elijah was only five months old when we first saw Dr. Mayer and she couldn't do her full assessment, she determined that he had a "dense and complete right hemifield defect." In other words, he had no right field of vision in both eyes. This is why the Teacher of the Visually Impaired got involved with us. I described this a bit more at the end of this post. We were told that Elijah may regain some of his right field of vision due to the plasticity of his brain. We weren't sure that this would happen, but yesterday Dr. Mayer seemed confident that he has regained some of his upper right field of vision. There still seems to be some loss in his lower right field, but he has made definite progress!! Dr. Mayer was very pleased with this news, and we were thrilled!!!!!! She also thought that his acquity has improved from 20/360 (at the very low range of normal for a 5 month old) to 20/100 (average for a 12 month old). I'll do another post about this once we get Dr. Mayer's official report since I'm sure that I'm not explaining this as clearly as she will. Either way, we were so happy to hear this great news yesterday!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
On the Move!
As I wrote yesterday, Elijah is on the move!!! He has now ventured all the way around the first floor of our house (aside from the bathroom). This morning he found his way under his exersaucer.
We played peek-a-boo around the couch. 
Elijah likes to open and close doors, so he was happy to discover the play kitchen. 
He ventured down the hallway and found...
...the stairs!! Time to get out the baby gates!
The baby tornado-knocking over chairs and taking names!
When Elijah had his surgery, the neurosurgeon told us that there was a chance that he could be (temporarily) paralyzed on the right side of his body following the surgery or that he may have some weakness on his right side down the road. Thankfully, he came out of surgery just fine, and we haven't noticed any weakness on his right side at all since then. That's why it's so thrilling to watch him explore and get around on his own. He receives services through Early Intervention to monitor his development and to make sure that he stays on track. A physical therapist comes to our house once a week. Now Elijah is also seen by a Teacher of the Visually Impaired (TVI) every other week since he has a right visual field defect, or Homonymous Hemianopia, as a result of his tumor. From what we understand, he doesn't see anything in his right visual field of both eyes. He seems to be compensating amazingly well, though, by turning his eyes and head to the right, so it's hard to even tell that he has this issue. The TVI will give us strategies to help him as he becomes even more mobile. I notice that he bumps his head into things on his right side sometimes if he hasn't looked all around to see what's in front of and beside him. If this is the worst of his problems, we really can't complain! We're just thankful that he's happy and healthy and making great strides developmentally! We're also thankful to live in a place that has such great services to help us and Elijah!
When Elijah had his surgery, the neurosurgeon told us that there was a chance that he could be (temporarily) paralyzed on the right side of his body following the surgery or that he may have some weakness on his right side down the road. Thankfully, he came out of surgery just fine, and we haven't noticed any weakness on his right side at all since then. That's why it's so thrilling to watch him explore and get around on his own. He receives services through Early Intervention to monitor his development and to make sure that he stays on track. A physical therapist comes to our house once a week. Now Elijah is also seen by a Teacher of the Visually Impaired (TVI) every other week since he has a right visual field defect, or Homonymous Hemianopia, as a result of his tumor. From what we understand, he doesn't see anything in his right visual field of both eyes. He seems to be compensating amazingly well, though, by turning his eyes and head to the right, so it's hard to even tell that he has this issue. The TVI will give us strategies to help him as he becomes even more mobile. I notice that he bumps his head into things on his right side sometimes if he hasn't looked all around to see what's in front of and beside him. If this is the worst of his problems, we really can't complain! We're just thankful that he's happy and healthy and making great strides developmentally! We're also thankful to live in a place that has such great services to help us and Elijah!
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