It is interesting to me how essential the Internet has become to our everyday lives. We wake up every morning to catch the latest news not by clicking on the tv, but instead surfing the top news outlets on the web.
We need to shop for presents-we turn to the web to find the latest gift ideas and read endless reviews on the products. We need to research our ancestry, school projects, work presentation numbers, etc.- you name it and we do it everyday on the Internet. Look up old high school friends, talk to new friends, find out what homework is due when-the Internet is an integral part of our lives.
So I shouldn’t have been amazed recently when I faced what seemed to me as a life crisis to find comfort on the net. But I was. Recently my seven-year-old son was diagnosed with amblyopia. For those who don’t know, it is a scientific term for what was called “lazy eye” in the old days.
The kicker to this whole diagnosis is that the earlier you catch the condition, the more chance you can correct the problem. My son’s eye never wandered, cross-eyed, etc. that you typically think a lazy eye would do.
Instead my son’s left eye is perfectly normal and healthy, he just has no vision out of it. Since he was a baby, his brain received a blurry image from that eye. His right eye was so dominant that his left eye gave up working.
My husband and I had no clue it wasn’t working. He passed several eye tests every year, which we now know that kids find a way to compensate or cheat without knowing it. He is the top in his class with his teacher commenting that she has never given a + on handwriting in the first nine weeks until this year. He was the top in every sport he plays. We never noticed the little things like how when he talked to us he would always turn to face us dead on. We never noticed that we could walk completely up to him on his left side and he not even know we were there. We never realized that every goal he missed in soccer was when he shot from the left side.
So when our son failed a vision test at school, we knew it had to be a mistake. When he failed at the pediatrician’s office, we honestly thought that maybe he misunderstood the directions or faking because his dad recently got glasses. But as we sat in the eye doctor’s office, we were speechless as our oldest son could not even see the big E with his right eye patched. My heart sank into my stomach as I listened to the doctor explain that he was almost blind in that eye and because we caught it so late the chances of him getting vision back were very unlikely. Tears welled as he said that our goal as parents would be to protect his right eye so that he would not be blind in life. I felt discouraged as he suggested “patch therapy” despite much hope of it helping him. I felt angry that I had missed all these signs. I felt upset to think that my son would be in glasses the rest of his life just so that his right eye stayed protected with the special polycarbonate lens. I felt scared as a parent that I had let him down.
After days of an emotional roller coaster, I googled amblyopia. It was then that I found hope and comfort. I found countless other parents and kids going through the same thing in a discussion forum. I found a new medical study that showed kids with this condition ages 7 to 17 had showed improvement with patch therapy. I found ideas to encourage my son to want to wear the patch. I found others who felt the same way I did about what we were going through as a family. The Internet put me in touch with others that I never would have known existed and was a source of comfort when I needed it the most.
I also found this verse online:
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1John 4:18
I am not scared now because I know that God loves my son and that all of this is through is will. I am grateful, however, that technology has come so far to allow me to know I am not alone in this battle.
Please feel free to comment how Internet has changed your life. I would love to hear its impact.
