DD has initial orthoptist appointment tomorrow - what to expect?

[suzi2]

The Orthoptist is coming into my local Drs surgery so I'm not sure how much they can assess etc? DD has a lazy eye/squint and her eye is now barely moving from turned in. So it's obvious there's a problem. Just not sure what to expect and what will be done and under what sort of timeline.

And should I take a mountain of chocolate buttons for bribery and to keep her calm? She's 21 months BTW.

Orthoptist appointments are normally fairly relaxed, but chocolate buttons will probably come in handy!

They usually have some small toys and a pen light that they move from side to side and up and down to see if your dd will follow them, usually both eyes together then each eye on it's own.I think the aim of this is to measure how far the eye is turned in and how far it can turn out as well, sometimes they use a prism for this as well.

They also usually have a set of cards with a line drawing on, either at the top of the card or the bottom. The line drawing starts off with quite a thick line that gets thinner (although the picture stays the same size iyswim) which I think checks general eyesight as the child has to look for the picture.

Sometimes they do a few other things but it seems to depend on which orthoptist you get. I think dd3s appointments usually last about 15 minutes, depending on how cooperative she is feeling on the day Hope you and your dd get on ok and they can sort something out.

Thanks - that's exactly what did happen. DD was pretty uncooperative! But the orthoptist did some general stuff to see how here eyes were moving and doesn't think it's a 'muscle' issue at all. She thinks the squint is a result of bad eyesight so DD is now being referred to the hospital for a sight test. That should be fun...

The orthoptist says DD is most likely to be long sighted, but her squint is worst focussing at distanes and much less when she's very close to me. So we'll see.

Actually the sight test is very boring - they put drops in the childs eye to dilate the pupil, you hang around for 30-45 minutes, and then they peer in their eyes and see how the light is focussed

Good to know there's not much to it. DD has no attention span! Then there's all the fun of glasses to come...

suzi2 your dd has the similar problems to mine - we are a year down the line now. She has a muscular squint which will need to be surgically corrected, a lazy eye and is fairly long sighted in that eye.

At hospital she had some drops in her eyes to open the pupil and the opthalmologist shone lights in her eyes through lenses to determine her prescription. She took the whole thing very well and was chuffed to bits with her sticker!

We have always stuck with the free frames and lenses as she is always bending and breaking them - not worth shelling out for the others until her prescription settles and she gets a bit older and a bit less ham fisted! She is very good at wearing them and the envy of a lot of her friends - two or three have apparently shed tears because they can't have a pair of pink glasses like my dd's.

We found that glasses helped her squint while she was wearing them but even a year on, her eye turns in once she takes them off. Your experience could well be different of course.

We also patch her good eye for a few hours every day to force her lazy eye to work and improve - you may end up with patches as well.

Good luck!