Shelby's Vision

First I want to say that yesterday during PT, Shelby tracked Beth's face with just her eyes for the first time!! This is a really big deal for two reasons. 1) The face is very complicated to look at and Shelby usually tracks solid, shiny or light-up things, and 2) This is the first time she has tracked while moving her eyes only and not her head. Beth and I actually teared up....it was so exciting!

Our ophthalmologist appointment was this morning with Dr. Bashinsky. First, they did a functional visual assessment to get an estimate of Shelby's vision. The ortho-optist held up different cards with a black and white pattern on them that got smaller with each card. She determined that Shelby's vision is roughly 20/360 (which is better than we expected). This is only an estimate because Shelby obviously can't talk and tell us what she is seeing and how she sees things (but, oh how I wish she could). Anyway, to give everyone a reference, legally blind is 20/200 vision or worse. But we have already seen significant improvement with Shelby's vision and are expecting that to continue. Hopefully one day, she won't be considered legally blind.

Dr. Bashinsky then dilated Shelby's eyes to look at her optic nerves. The optic nerves looked the same as it did 3 months ago and Dr. Bashinsky doesn't expect there to be any more damage. A couple other things: Shelby is still far-sighted, has a nystagmus (the eyes sometimes dance around), and strabismus (slightly crossed eyes). At around a year of age, we may look at some patching of Shelby's right eye to strengthen the left. Also, if she is still measuring far-sighted at that time, she'll get glasses to help with that. And the doctor may consider surgery to correct the strabismus when Shelby is two years old if she thinks that will help her vision at that time.

Overall, we're pretty happy about the results of this appointment. We know she is seeing things and that her vision will keep getting better!

Shelby and Beth doing some PT!

Shelby tracking Beth's face

Shelby and Daddy at the Ophthalmologist's