moving on...

Ok, now that the drama is, as far as I'm concerned over I'll post about more important things than some sniveling idiot who attacks websites of lost babies as a way to make herself feel better. There were just 2 comments from her in my email box that were promptly deleted without being read.... I don't feel the need to consume myself with people like that and I won't torture y'all with it either. I have no problem discussing my views, but when someone does the things she's done they no longer deserve my attention.

So, moving on. We all had our annual eye exams yesterday. A wonderful 3 hours in the eye doctors office! UGH! I think next year we should split the appts up instead of doing them all on one day, the kids get sooo restless in there for so long and I don't blame them!

Same old same old, my prescription got stronger, so did Austin's. Craig still just needs reading glasses (no fair!) and Hailey now needs glasses. The interesting stuff is with Shay.

Some of you may remember last year me talking about how the eye Dr said she had something peculiar with her eyes, one was higher than the other and she appeared to have "shut down" her left eye completely. We then got a second opinion who said that he didn't know what was wrong with her except that she didn't appear to have much vision in EITHER eye. For now we'd have to wait and see how it played out since she seemed to be functioning great in school and all (she's my lil smartie pants!)

Well, it turns out it's even more peculiar than originally thought. She has an eye condition called Dissociated Vertical Deviation, DVD. Which is also called Alternating Sursumduction.

I'm still trying to learn more about it online, it's quite rare and her form seems rarer yet but I'll explain it as best I can. Think of a fish...... you know how a fish sees out of one eye at a time because if it saw out of both it would see 2 different things and its brain wouldn't know how to process the image(s)? That's how Shaylin sees. She sees out of one eye at a time and her brain switches between them depending on what it wants to focus on. She literally shuts one eye off while keeping the other on and then flips subconciousely. The only effect she gets is the occasional short lived blur as the newly switched "on" eye adjusts to the light, much like how when you wake up in the morning the world is hazy for a moment.

You can literally watch this strange phenomenon happen in her too, as the eye doctor showed me by having her look at a small object and then covering each eye one at a time. When you cover her left eye and have her look at an object and then remove the cover and place it over the OTHER eye the eye that's turns "on" does a sudden, small downward shift while the eye that is turned "off" stays fixed. It's really interesting.

Her vision is actually great in both eyes, 20/20. IF you happen to get lucky and examine the "on" eye in order, in the "off" eye her vision is next to zero until it's switched on and then it's 20/20. Wierd huh?

This apparently happened because her eyes are congenitally (from birth) misaligned every so slightly. To look at her you'd never even notice but when, as a baby she saw with both eyes she saw double because of this so her brain chose to allow one eye to turn off to correct the image it was seeing. Shay's case is more rare because of the sustained vision in both eyes. Normally the brain will completely, usually irrepairably turn off one of the eyes, never to have sight again. In her case somehow she was allowed to retain perfect vision in BOTH eyes while seeing unilaterally.

Long term this does have some implications. She will never be a fighter pilot, she may or may not drive due to having terrible depth perception. You need bilateral (2 eyes) vision to have depth perception so her's is really bad.

Confusing? yep. Interesting? definitely.........