Eye Doctor

Mikey needed to go to the eye doctor recently. Although he has had scans and preliminary eye tests at his pediatrician, he’s never been to a real eye doctor before.  

To be honest, I still get anxious taking Mikey to new places and I thought this visit might be particularly challenging.  I wasn’t sure if this doctor would want to give him the pupil dilating drops or look into his eyes with the bright light. I didn’t think he’d be able to tolerate either of those. I thought I’d probably need to advocate for him to decline those exams, but I was unsure if his eye doctor could get the information she needed without those tests.

It turned out, Michael did a wonderful job. There was an option to pay a small extra fee and do a digital scan of his eyes instead of the drops and the bright light. I was able to do that and it made the trip much easier.  This might be the kind of thing that insurance could pre-approve for kids with special needs…it’s worth a phone call to the insurance company to find out. 

Mikey felt great because they were asking him lots of questions and he knew the answers!  The color-blindness test was shapes. The 3D vision test was naming animals. He was asked to draw some pictures copying simple line drawings and he nailed it. The distance vision was letters and the test for up-close vision was naming numbers.  He had it all under control.

So, as sometimes happens, I was nervous for no reason.  All good.