Thursday, March 01, 2007

Eye-Eye, Miss O!


I'm fucking ecstatic tonight, however, I didn't think I would be when the day started. I had to pick up Miss O early today from school to drive about an hour away for her eye doctor appointment. See, the girl has had some eye issues since she was a wee spawnlet. She had this strabismus early on and actually had to have eye surgery when she was about nine months old. Fucking ripped my heart out, but the surgery was successful and her eyes were straightened.

So, she's worn glasses since forever. When we moved out here to Michigan, or what I like to call "The Birthplace of My Impending Death," there was pretty much only this one pediatric ophthalmologist in town, so we went to her. This woman, in all her schoolmarm-meets-Olive-Oyl glory, was from the "I don't like to share information about my patients with parents" school of doctorin', and every time we went there, we would attempt, futilely, to get just a fucking kernel of info about Miss O's eye status from this broad. Bupkus. She ran a fucking puppy mill, but for children... with eye problems. "Oh she looks fine... come on back in sixth months. NEXT!"

Anywhich, we finally heard about this great doc who works through University of Michigan. We took Miss O to see her a few months ago, and she says, "Hmmm... you should really be patching Miss O's stronger eye to strengthen the weak one. If it doesn't improve, we're probably going to have to do another surgery." Mother-fucker! By doing nothing, ol' Schoolmarmy-Oyl was basically making Miss O's eyes revert back to their old crossing ways and now we're hearing the girl might have to go back under the knife?! And if we didn't do the surgery, Miss O might never have depth-perception and then, well, there goes her fucking boxing career.

So, we patched her religiously for the last three months -- four hours a day, after school. At first Miss O was really fucking pissed... like pirate-pissed, ARRRRR!, and rightly so. Her weak eye couldn't really see shit, thanks to "Dr. I'm-not-a-doctor." But we could tell, after awhile, that the eye started getting a lot stronger and she didn't seem to be bitching anymore. Plus, we got her these patches that had really cute things on them like flowers and smiley faces which, compared to the flesh-colored patches I remember seeing on kids growing up that would make me fucking dry-heave my larynx out, are almost hip. Almost.

Cut to today, we go in, the doc checks her look, has her read some letters, look at some pictures and lights, put on some wacky colored lenses and, bingo, she says, "Wow. Things are looking great! Ya know, I think a little more patching and things will be right on track. Looks like she's not going to be needing that surgery after all." In your wrinkly, pinched face, Quacky VonEyedoctorimpersonatorson!

Miss O, rockin' the ophthalmologizzie with her eye muscle skizzies. Now if you'll excuse me, there's a doctor's office I need to egg.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hear a song coming on...

Yay little one! Way to train your eye girl!

nora leona said...

Way to go, Miss O!

Anonymous said...

You should report that quack. Seriously. It may save other people who don't have your smarts and resources, some pain.

crabbydad said...

I hear you, Natasha. We already convinced a friend of Miss O's who went to the quack to switch to the new doc, and she, too, now wears a patch. I think a lot of small towns are like this -- people just don't realize that there are real docs out there who didn't get their degrees from Sally Struthers.