Anyone had their child diagnosed with a lazy eye ?

[Looby34]

I got an 'out of the blue' call from nursery today to say dd2 had woken from her sleep and one of her eye balls seemed to be 'stuck' in the corner of her eye. DH took her to the Dr who has referred her to a specialist and said she may need to wear a patch for a while each day to correct it - or maybe even an operation.

Eyeball not currently stuck in that position - think it must be worse when she is tired / round sleep times...

I am a bit shocked and she doesn't appear to be in any discomfort but would be grateful to hear from anyone who this has happened to.

I had a lazy eye as a child and had to wear an eye patch. It is corrected now, my eyes don't look squiffy at all, but if I'm tired or extremely drunk lol, I tend to go 'bog eyed' (as my friends put it)

On the other hand, my BIL had a squint as a child (you could nad can still see it all the time) he had an operation and it still didnt fix it. He was proper squint eyed though, and you can tell all the time, not just when tired.

I'm sure if it has just come on and isnt all the time, it will be correctable, I seem to remember mine starting when I started school around 4.

HTh

This is a not uncommon thing. My niece wears a patch on her good eye for about an hour each day to help her 'lazy' or sleepy eye as she calls it,to come 'out and play'- ie work harder to correct squint.The earlier this treatment starts the better. My DN loves her patches- you can get them with cartoon faces and you can also buy reusable ones with bright patterns.

think mine might need a patch. routine eye check referral from hv turned up something called exotropia(?)
only have google to go on so far tho, as havnt had the appt to find out what to do about it.
i cant actually see anything odd about his eyes tho... so it must be pretty mild (letter said 'a moderate degree of...')

I used to have one
I didn't have a patch or anything (i don't actually think my parents noticed) I grew out of it, but I can feel it go when I am tired.

Thanks for all your posts. I'm still a bit freaked out by it as it seems to have come on all of a sudden (maybe I just didn't notice it before because it isn't that obvious). I just feel bad for her. Elliephant - nice to hear about the cartoon patches and that your neice is OK about wearing hers..

My DD1 (3.6 at the time) was diagnosed with 1 lazy eye a year ago. She did not have squint etc, we had no idea. Her opthalmologist decided to try drops first (before patching) - and she had drops to blur vision in good eye every second day for few months, then twice a week, then once and now no drops. Her vision in that lazy eye went from 20/200 (!) to 20/30 in just 8 months.

The patch works the same, they usually wear it for 2-4 hours per day, later tapering off.

We are very fortunate to have such early diagnoses - until age 8 or so (apparently) they eyes are still developing and can improve with treatment.

DD has a lazy eye had no idea no squint or anything but took her to the optitian as she seemed to be screwing up her eye to see tv. Hers is because she has an astigmatism in one eye and is slightly short sighted in the same eye. That eye stopped working as hard and the other eye compensated.

DD was given glasses and a patch to wear for an hour every day. Was told that the drops were a last resort to blur the vision as it is generally no necessary to blur the vision for as long as the drops do.
Some of the patches are great really fancy, dd had felt ones that fitted over her glasses rather than a sticky one.

I still have mine, as it was not treated until I was in my 30's. Basically, unless I wear my special glasses with the inbuilt prism (doesn't show), I only use one eye at the time: my left eye for longdistance and my right eye for reading. This means I have no stereo vision and find it hard to judge distances. Better with my glasses, but still not good on distances. It took many months of hard work to get my eyes trained to the point where I could use the glasses. Before that I used to get very bad headaches.