My daughter, my pirate warrior

When Sadie was 8 months old she was diagnosed with Duane's Syndrome, an extremely rare congenital eye condition. What it means is that she was born without an optic nerve in her left eye that controls the muscle.  In other words, she is unable to move her left eye outward.  There is no cure.  This is something she will have to live with for the rest of her life.  The good news is that in theory her vision shouldn't be affected, although there can be issues with head posture and movement as her body compensates for the lack of peripheral vision on her left side. Over the past two years things have been seemingly developing well.  However, during our recent visit to the pediatric ophthalmologist, we learned that her vision is substandard, and the dreaded eye patch to strengthen her left eye was recommended.  You can imagine how thrilled Sadie and I were at the news.

So, here we go. Let's convince an almost three year old to wear an eye patch for 2 hours a day (thank goodness it is only 2 hours!).  The first day was seamless. Shockingly.  Every day since then (as long as she gets to set the timer and look forward to ice cream and Peppa Pig when it goes off - with a few occasional reminders during the 2 hours- she does pretty well.

Every day when I watch her with that eye patch on, I can't help but feel sad for her.  Not constantly, but as a very empathetic person (and her mom!) I hate to see her have to go through anything abnormal or potentially painful.  Luckily, this isn't painful for her, and so far Isaac hasn't made fun of her or tried to pull it off her.  Needless to say we stick around the house for those couple hours.  It could be a lot worse, and for that we are lucky.

So here is my beautiful daughter being her awesome pirate self.