New Specs!

Alex has worn traditional glasses for years now, but she had an eye appointment a few weeks back and we talked a lot about the use of prisms with her.  Alex's eyes don't converge (meaning her eyes do not work together when she's trying to focus on something).  When you read or look at a close object, your eyes need to turn inward together to focus and Alex seems to be all over the place when she's trying to focus or grab at something.   Lately we have been working a lot with flash cards - Tammy asked Alex if she could read one day and Alex kind of rolled her eyes at her and then raised her eyebrows to say yes so Tammy got some flash cards that only had words on them - colors specifically.   When you ask Alex to pick which color you're asking her for she tends to do more of a swipe to reach out and you can't really gauge if she's actually picking what you are asking for.  She looks at the right answer, but it's hard to gauge her accuracy with the swipe. 

This is a pretty good example of how prisms are used to correct deviations of the eyes by altering the

position of an object. 

Shannon started working with her and prism therapy at her physical therapy session this week and gave us some 'vision therapy' to work on with her.  When Shannon put the prism glasses on her she looked all around, she was clearly being super observant with them on so it really makes me wonder how she is actually seeing things.  Plus, she was SO happy the whole time she had them on.  Once her session was over I put the glasses on and it was interesting to see how they worked.

Here she is at therapy rocking out her Harry Potter impersonation :)

  

....and here she is leaving the eye doctor with her new glasses that have the prisms built into her prescription.  This is the first time she's ever gotten Micraflex glasses - they are totally soft and flexible and have no metal or plastic pieces or even hinges so she can twist them, bend them, eat them and everything she's done to mangle all of her previous glasses!  I was a little worried they were going to look like swim goggles, but they actually look pretty cute on her :)

The first two days she's done great with them - we can definitely tell she's trying to get use to them and she's been twisting her head a little and looking out of the sides of glasses at certain things, but like anything else, I'm sure she just needs time to adjust to them.

The other night after I gave her a shower I put her in her fancy new bean bag chair to watch TV while I cleaned up the bathroom.  When I came back into her room I started laughing to my self - she just looked so "typical" watching TV with her glasses on and her legs crossed. 

I would give anything to know what's going on in that mind of hers!