Monday, February 15, 2010

Definitely My Child


Benjamin got glasses a couple of years ago, a slight correction to his left eye, no correction on the right. Then there was a missed follow-up appointment last year (my fault that we missed it, but then I couldn't find the little piece of paper which had the two "telephone hours" during which I could call each week to rebook so I just gave up - gotta love Sweden sometimes)... then he quit wearing his glasses. The school nurse called me last week to report that he should really be wearing glasses so I made the booking. But now that he is a big 8 years old, I no longer have to go to the 2-hour-phone-time-eye-doctor, but can make an appointment with the mall store, the one that does answer the phone.

Benjamin was a real trooper, trying so hard to see what he just couldn't see. At first, they started with the right eye, and he was a bit thrown by the eye chart - thought he should be reading the words, not just the letters, and HVOR didn't make much sense. But then he sailed through with only a slight correction. Then she started on the left eye...

"That eye is broken," he said. "I don't use it." (WHAT??? Why didn't he say something to me?)

And the dials started moving.

"Can you read the letters?"

"No..."

"How about now?" (more dials moving)

"No..."

"How about now?" (more turning and whirring)

"No..."

"How about now?" (more dials moving)

And finally he could make out the letters, the bigger ones. His prescription at that point was -3.5, a fair bit worse than the -.75 he had before. But when she put his eyes together, his brain couldn't handle the correction, so he ended up with his left eye only moving to -1.5, the level that didn't leave him dizzy, and the right at -1.

Nearsightedness runs in families, apparently. He's not quite up to my -5s, but he is certainly moving in that direction. I hope he got some good genes from me somewhere else, since I seem to have short-changed him in the short-sighted department...

And here's hoping he will wear the new glasses in the future. We pick them up next week. If he looks at me and says, "Mamma, I can see!" then the circle will be complete (since that's what I said to my mom when I got my first pair of glasses).

1 comment:

Leigh said...

Benjamin's comment when he got his new glasses was "Whoa!"