The State of the Girl

It's been eight (long) weeks since we started the eye patch regime. At the initial appointment to access her eye problems, we found out that the vision in her lazy eye was poor enough that her brain had turned off the signals from that eye completely. Even with her glasses on, she couldn't see past the first line of the eye test! With instructions to patch six hours a day, they were hoping to see a fifty percent improvement in the bad eye. And now we've had our first follow-up appointment and.............. There's been an eighty percent improvement! The bad eye has almost equalised with the good eye, so we only have one month at four hours a day and one month at one hour a day.

We are all beyond pleased, and so proud of how brave she's been. It's not been easy, her confidence has taken a serious knock and there has been some major angsting, but she has never refused to wear it and for that I'm eternal grateful.

I've been continuing to make her new patches based on her complaints feedback on the earlier ones. The rolled hem edges were proclaimed scratchy, so I started binding them in satin bias binding, which also has the added benefit of stabilising the dome shape so her eye can remain open. The stiffer dome shape (and also the large size) has also ensured that peeking around the edges wasn't possible. The optometrist said that my version is better than the one that the NHS has been recommending so that was a bonus :)

Addendum: As far as I'm aware, there's no one who reads my blog who currently has a patching child and would therefore be interested in a tutorial, but if that ever changes or if someone finds themself here who wants to know how to make one just leave a comment.

UPDATE: The tutorial is here!