The kids came home from school today, and Tori came over to my desk. She had a concerned look on her face, and said "Mom, I'm seeing something." I've become very leery when Tori says this. Is it nothing? Is it adjustments? Is it stress and strain? She said she was seeing a floating white-yellow line in the top of her eye. She was also seeing a wall off to the side. The floating white-yellow line wasn't a concern for me. It was the "wall" off to the side that I didn't like.
I'm so tired of being a hypochondriac mother! I called my Dad and said, "I need a stable, non-mother answer." I explained the situation and he said, "I think you should call the On-Call." This just helped nudge me over the edge of my questioning. At least I wasn't the only one to see something that could be a potential problem.
I called the on-call answering service and told them the situation. I also dropped Dr. Bernsteins name just for good measure. The answering service said it could sometimes take up to 20 minutes to get the on-call to return their call but to hold on the line and she would see if she could get hold of them quickly. Within 5 minutes I had the doctor on the phone.
I again explained the situation. He asked a few questions as to why I thought my daughter had a retinal detachment at 9 years old. (Obviously this isn't a very common probably amongst children.) He said, "I'm happy to run into the office. What you describe could be many complications. It might be nothing, but it could be something. I wouldn't know until I looked in her eyes." So, I dropped the other kids off at Grandma and Grandpa Child's and ran Tori out to the Moran Eye Center once again.
It was the fastest after hours appointment I've ever had. No E.R. No waiting for the doctor to decide if he was coming in to see her. No $75.00 co-pay. He met us in the lobby and we went upstairs to the offices. He dilated her eyes and did a really thorough exam. There was one spot where he looked VERY CLOSELY. I started to get nervous at that point, especially when he stopped the exam and started asking Tori to tell him EXACTLY what she was seeing and WHERE she was seeing it.
He said she has some pretty good scarring on her left eye next to her nose. There also seems to be a small strand of vitreous still remaining which I think could have been the white-yellow line. The place that he found the scarring and where Tori was describing her issues weren't corresponding so he looked again for good measure. He also gave me some instructions on how to test her peripheral vision just in case the wall becomes a big problem. As of bedtime it's still there. He told me he was unsure of what Tori is seeing. There isn't any signs of anything going wrong. He did say that it could mean the beginnings of a problem, but at this point all is well. He also commented that she has had enough trauma done to her eye that this just might be something she will have to cope with.
I just hope she will one day be able to distinguish between the fixable and un-fixable concerns. I know she is only 9 so I'm not going to try and push it. We have so many appointments in the next few months I'm not too concerned with the waiting. Someday I also hope to not feel like a hypochondriac for my kids. I would like to go a few months without a doctors appointment someday.
Eyes are one thing that you can't mess with though. You can't replace them, not yet anyway. Maybe someday technology will get there, but for now we have to be careful with my family. It's not like she just had a low grade fever that we could just watch it for a few days. There isn't an obvious open wound that needs fixing. These are her eyes, and at this point they still work so I'm going to do everything I can to keep it so.
Oh well. I need to go to bed. Night all!
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