Thursday, October 21, 2010

Shelby's Vision


Wow, two posts in two days and three in one week!  I guess a lot has been happening lately.

The latest news is about Shelby's Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI).  For those of you who don't know about CVI, it means that, while Shelby's eyes are fine, her brain damage makes it difficult for the brain to process what the eyes "see".  CVI can range from near total blindness to a very minor condition.  The other interesting thing is that it almost always improves over time.  What is unknown is just how much it will improve.

Shelby's vision teacher has given Shelby CVI tests that shows how severe her CVI is.  It is based on a scale of 1-10 (1 being very visually impaired, and 10 meaning that she sees almost normally).  I say almost because I don't think CVI every really goes away completely.  It is one of those things that can be really good one day, and bad the next.  Or it can get bad just because she's tired or sick.

Anyway, the first time Shelby took the test (less than a year ago) she scored a 2 out of ten.  Even this was fairly good news to us at the time, because when she was only a few months old, she really could not see much of anything.  Well, she took the test again yesterday, and her CVI score has improved to a 7.9!!!  Even her vision teacher is surprised at how much she has improved.  She said she typically sees that kind of improvement over several years!  And of course, it can still keep improving.

Once again, we are absolutely amazed by our little girl.  Keep it up Shelb.

4 comments:

  1. Super news! Vision is so scary to deal with mainly because there is little we can do for it. The brain has total control.

    Has she ever had patch therapy or could glasses be of any help? We deal with both in this house.

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  2. Great news. I always like to read about her progress!

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  3. That's wonderful news!! Little Shelby is so amazing...

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  4. That's such good news! I love getting to be here in Shelby's cheering section.

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