Opthamology

Today Grayson had his Opthamology appointment.

The initial reason for the visit was to address Grayson's tear ducts -or lack there of.

Grayson had his tear ducts probed once when he was around 9 months old and again around 12 months... it seemed to help a little but turns out that he procedures did not do the job.

Grayson constantly has eye drainage which results in regular eye infections some to the point where he is bleeding from his eye...so as you can imagine, this had to be addressed.

Turns out Grayson does not have tear ducts. He will need surgery where they go in with a probe but this time use a tool that essentially is a tiny little balloon that they will "inflate" to create tear ducts for our little man.

Poor guy just can't catch a break...but hopefully this surgery will do the trick and he will have no further issues.


Aside from the tear duct issue, Grayson was diagnosed with Optic Nerve Hypoplasia which is basically the underdevelopment of the optic nerve. This can create problems with eye sight but it is hard to tell in a child as young as Grayson if it is in fact affecting his vision. The doctor said the best way to answer that question is to ask the parents, "Do you think your child has trouble with his/her vision" ... I answered no to this question because it truly doesn't seem so. Yes Grayson will get right up on a tv but that is because he likes to feel the static and likes to put his tongue on the screen...he does not do it in a sense to try to see better...its more a sensory thing. Otherwise he seems to have no problems with his vision.

However, they are still going to do a test called a VEP Test (Visual Evoked Potentional Test). With this test that will attach little things to his head to trace brain signals while having him sit on my lap and stare at a little tv that has an alternating checkerboard patter that changes in size, speed and direction.

We tried to do this test once before and it did not go well so we do not know the results. We were able to get him to cooperate for the beginning part of the test but once they needed to put a patch over one eye to test the eyes individually he completely shut down...so hopefully this next time around will go better than before.

The doctor asked if we ever had an MRI done and we have...when he was around 1 year old. I told her that it showed an under developed corpus callosum as well as delayed myelination in his brain. She was most interested in the under developed corpus callosum and said it makes her a little nervous because the corpus callosum runs directly in the middle of the brain and at the front of the brain you have his optic nerves... in the middle of the optic nerves and just below the front end of the corpus callosum is the pituitary gland... she is wondering if it is also under developed and has referred us to an Endocrinologist as she thinks it is a good idea to do blood work on Grayson to test for hormone deficiency.

I will not be surprised if we do find out he does have a growth hormone deficiency since he is "small" for his age and slowly but surely we keep finding out about different parts of his inner and outer workings being underdeveloped. Even though I will not be surprised, it will just be nice to know as well and if it is so, then we can think about growth hormones.


We probably won't have another update on all of this for a few months but don't worry... Updates will come as soon as we have any :)