So the final determination after September's vision loss was that she has dragging of the macula in her right eye. This can cause unpredictable loss of acuity, with some patients with severe dragging having perfect acuity, and some patients with mild dragging having severe loss of acuity. There's nothing to be done about this, new glasses won't fix it. She now has permanent uncorrectable vision loss in that eye.

Mabon is the time of Harvest Home, when the fruits of our labors are brought in from the fields and the land is left to rest and recover over the winter months. Therefore, it is also a time to reflect on ourselves, what we have accomplished through the year, what goals we have met.

Tamara reported seeing flashing lights yesterday morning during school. She also said she felt like she was cross-eyed when she tried to read, after the flashes. I checked her vision and discovered that she couldn't read a magazine at a normal distance with her right eye, although she could with her left. We called Dr. Trese's office and set up an emergency appointment for just 2 hours away, and left immediately.

Kender and Jarod are going in for their next EUA (exam under anesthesia) on Monday. Every single time any of the kids goes in, the hospital has to call three times, first to do admission (insurance type info), second to do intake (medical history), and third to give us a time. You'd think at least the first (and maybe part of the second) could be skipped after the first one, but whatever.

So this lady today doing the intake on Jarod asks what his birth weight was. I said, "8-10."

"Wow, that's a big boy!"

"Not really," I said, "he wasn't my biggest."

"He wasn't?"

Yesterday, I took Liam for his second optometrist appointment. His first was last spring, and she said that while he was a little off, it was only about a quarter diopter, not enough to correct. Last week, during school, he told me he couldn't read the calendar on the fridge from his seat at the table. I checked, and he seemed to have a focal length of about 3-4 feet. So I scheduled him for a refraction. Sure enough, he is now at -1.5 diopters, and so we ordered his first pair of glasses yesterday. He will need to go back in 6 months, since he changed so much in the last year.

I was challenged today by someone who claimed that I, as a lowly parent, couldn't possibly manage to educate my children in the skills of blindness. This was my response:

I guess take this for what it's worth, since my more blind children are still preschoolers. But I do have four other children that are old enough to be allowed some freedoms away from home, one of whom has another physical disability and is autistic and is mildly visually impaired, so I'm not flying totally blind here.

It's hard to believe that it's already been a year since Kender was born at home. And yet so much has changed here in the last year that sometimes it seems much longer. Time, as always, slips away too quickly. I never feel like I got enough "itty bitty baby" time, but watching him reach each developmental milestone is so amazing that regret can't stick around.

Brenden had his first Exam Under Anesthesia (EUA) yesterday. He'd been reporting floaters off and on this year, but Dr. Trese never saw anything when examining him in the office. Because he'd seen some kids fit that profile and wind up actually having more problems when looked at under anesthesia, Dr. Trese recommended having Brenden come in for a look. It was a very long day, with Brenden originally scheduled for a 2:30pm procedure but not getting taken back until 4:30pm (he was a very hungry little boy!).

I've spent most of today working on it, but I've finally gotten the website transferred over to the new Drupal setup. Some of it I was able to automatically import, but some had to be done and cleaned up by hand, so it's been a bit of a tedious task. But it's done now. I'm really liking Drupal so far, and I have some pretty cool ideas of some new things I can do with the website now. At the very least, I've been able to make it look nice again, and it will be much easier to update and add new content! Take a look around and enjoy!

Raspberries are a pain to harvest, but they sure are plentiful and fun to eat! The black raspberries we planted in our garden several years ago have finally started to bear fruit. Plus, black raspberries grow wild in Michigan, and you can find a profusion of them down every trail and along every tree break. We have enough wild raspberries within walking distance of home to satisfy all of us!