Five Year Check Up

Since Rowan’s birthday fell on a Sunday, we had our annual check up the following week.  I decided everyone should go with us because I was obviously smokin’ crack, but off we went.  Life was going good.  Jory and I were getting some schooling done while we were in the waiting room and then waiting in the room for the doctor to show up.  I was proud that we were keeping things moving.

While we were waiting for the doctor, the nurse came to take Rowan for her ear and eye tests.  The ear tests she passed with flying colors.  She stood the appropriate distance away and the nurse asked, shapes or letters.  I said shapes.  Rowan got shapes wrong, though granted I thought some of them must have been drawn by blind people because they certainly didn’t look like hearts and diamonds should look.  Other times Rowan hesitated in responding to which shape was which.  Ugh, really.  I asked her to stop playing games.  Why was she acting blonde now?

I was getting frustrated.  The nurse suggested I take Rowan to the optometrist.  Was she for real?  I suggested, we try the test again except this time with letters.  Rowan knows her letters, I assured the nurse.  She said we could do it again after the check-up.

After her thumbs wellness check-up, we went back to the eye test room.  I left Jory and Layla outside the room so Rowan could have complete concentration.  She called out some letters, then it started getting shaky.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!  Why was this girl acting like a ditz on an important test?  Did she not understand her mommy had a job she needed to get to?   

The nurse said the words I didn’t want to hear.  I needed to take Rowan to an optometrist.

We waited for the referral as I watched time slip away and Layla and Jory started acting like they were escaped prisoners.  I was not a happy camper with Rowan.  We finally got the referral.  Luckily, the referral was for a doctor in the same building.  We went down to the first floor and I went in to make an appointment.  I was told the doctor had an opening, if I could wait five minutes.  I figured it couldn’t take that long so we waited.  Rowan was called in and we all went into the exam room. 

The doctor, whose bedside manner I was on the fence about, did a little of this, a little of that.  Then he said, she needs glasses and she needs to wear a patch on her lazy eye.  LAZY EYE!?!?!  What?!?! 

First things first, I had to ask some questions.  Until this doctor’s visit, Rowan never complained about having issues with seeing, I told the optometrist.  He told me the good eye was overcompensating for the weaker eye so Rowan wouldn’t have noticed the difference.  Oh, okay.  I could buy that.  What will wearing the patch do, I asked.  He told me it would make her lazy eye stronger.  Okay, glasses it was, so it seemed.

I was slightly still in shock.  She wasn’t being ditzy?  She honestly couldn’t read some of those letters or see the shapes clearly.  Wow!  I was going to feel guilty until I remembered it was Rowan, the girl who cries wolf.  But who knew she had a lazy eye.  I think of lazy eyes as being ones that are looking in another direction than the good eye.  Okay, then. 

We went and checked out frames.  Why?!  Why?!  Why do people want little kids to look like mini-adults?  Why do they have to look grown so fast?  And why would I pay $110 for a pair of Mickey Mouse glasses when the only emblem is on the side of the glasses, you know where she can’t see them unless the glasses were off her face?  I let her help me narrow the choices down.  I wasn’t thrilled with any of them, most of them were too big for her little five-year-old face, but I had to make a choice.  We went with the pinkish looking ones and called it a day.

The nurse gave me a black patch.  Oh my, my daughter was going to be a pirate.  All she needed was a bird to sit on her shoulder.  And told me Rowan had to wear the patch three to four hours a day.  Happy, happy, joy, joy.

And thus concludes the story of how the girl that cried wolf ended up with glasses.