You know what’s frustrating sometimes about being a parent? You can think that you know the right answer about a topic and then find out later on that you were mistaken. Often times this can rear its ugly head when one is dealing with the topic of medical care for one’s children.
As I’m sure many people have noticed over the past few
years, Ellie wears glasses. Personally, I’ve become so accustomed to seeing my
daughter in her glasses that it looks weird at bedtime when she’s not wearing
them. Ellie herself is so used to the feel of them on her face that she
occasionally tries to go to bed at night while still wearing them. No, it doesn’t
hurt anything but it probably isn’t very comfortable!
The reason for Ellie’s glasses has less to do with her
slight prescription and more to do with the fact that she has one eye that
tends to drift away from the center of her line of sight. The glasses were
actually prescribed to help keep that occurring and they’ve been doing a great
job. As a parent, the longer I can put off the idea of my daughter having
surgery, the better.
Of course, part of Ellie’s condition means that we have to
go to the eye doctor for checkups a couple of times a year to confirm that
everything is doing well. For the past two years, those checkups have been at
Children’s Mercy. While I can’t say enough nice things about the doctors there,
I have to say that billing and insurance has been a complete nightmare. Any
time she’s had a visit, it’s taken us months to sort out the financials of said
visit. Not fun at all!
After our last issue as Children’s Mercy, we decided that
maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to get a second opinion.
Therefore, that’s exactly what we decided to do beginning with Ellie’s next eye
exam, which coincidentally, was this morning. The new eye doctor of choice,
Vision Source, right on North Oak a scant mile from our house. Ellie had
actually been seen by them when she was one for a free infant vision screening.
In addition, she’s always had her glasses made there so we were familiar with
the establishment.
Upon our arrival today, we headed back to the exam room
where Ellie received a glaucoma test (much to her massive chagrin) and had an
image of her eye taken. From there, we headed back to the exam room where we
would remain for much of the next hour and a half. Why do I know it was an hour
and a half? Well, because we were able to watch almost all of Lilo & Stitch
in between checks of her eyes. The biggest reason for that delay was that Ellie’s
eyes just would not dilate the way they were supposed to. In fact, she
eventually had to have additional drops put in (her favorite!) just to get them
ready for examination. Finally, it was time to see the doctor!
Once the doctor came in, she checked Ellie over thoroughly
and said that her eyes looked very healthy. However, she was able to see the
drift that we had been having checked out regularly and essentially told us
that we would be better off continuing to take Ellie to Children’s Mercy to keep
tabs on it. The biggest reason why was that Children’s Mercy would be the ones
to have to do surgery, if necessary, so it was better that they continue playing
a role in her care.
I can’t say just how discouraging this was. As parents, we definitely
had reached a point of intense frustration with our child’s medical care only
to learn that there was really nothing else we could do. I guess the lone
saving grace here is that Ellie’s situation is extremely mild and nothing
serious. Regardless, it’s not much fun to convince ourselves we were doing the
right thing by doing something different only to find out that we were doing
the right thing in the first place.
That’s clear as mud, right?
#DaddyWrite
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