Like He Needs This

Yesterday, we suspected it.


Today, it was confirmed.


Joel is blind in his left eye.


As if he doesn't already have enough to deal with, now he has this loss to deal with as well.  The funny thing is, Joel doesn't realize he can't see.  We're downplaying it as much as possible so as not to freak him out.  It's just so unfair.

As I was getting Joel set up to watch movies after school on Thursday, I noticed his left pupil looked cloudy.  You know how when dogs get old and their eyes look foggy?  That's what it looked like.  Immediately, I freaked out on the inside.  I blocked Joel's right eye with a piece of paper and held up my hand.  I asked Joel to tell me how many fingers I was holding up.  He couldn't even zero in on my hand.  He kept trying to peek out from behind the paper.  Out of the ten times I asked him, "How many fingers?", he got it wrong all ten times.  I started to panic.  We look at Joel's eyes many times a day (we play a blinking game) and his eye didn't look like that in the morning.  Whatever had happened to it, happened within seven hours.

Mike came home from work and we whipped over to our doctor (the optometrist couldn't fit Joel in).  I have another story about something great that happened in the waiting room, but I'll save that for another post.  Our doc didn't have the proper equipment to adequately assess Joel...all he could do was agree that it looked abnormal. After the doc had checked him over, Joel had two very important questions to ask. First off, Joel wanted to know if he was going to die. When the doctor said, "No, you are perfectly healthy", Joel then asked, "Can I still go to Petland tomorrow?". That kid cracks me up.

This afternoon, the optometrist confirmed our fear.  The whiteness of the pupil is a result from lack of light being able to enter.  Joel is 100% blind in that eye.  On the positive side, his right eye is totally healthy and there's no reason to believe he will lose his vision on that side. 

Six years ago, Joel underwent surgery to loosen up his legs.  When he came out of surgery, his left eye was wonky in that it frequently wondered off in its own direction.  We discovered that Joel had some type of herpetic virus.  The optometrist figures Joel had slowly been losing his vision over the last six years.  When we look back, there were small signs that could have clued us in, but we didn't see them.  Like the fact that Joel hangs his head down and turned to the left to watch his portable DVD player.  We just figured it was a comfort issue because of the way he pushed the buttons.  Now we know it was to see it with his good eye. We are just so thankful he can see out of his right eye.  If he were to go completely blind, his world would be never be the same.  For Joel, a life without movies is not worth living.