Maria had an eye doctor appointment yesterday. He said her vision is noticeably better and she is tracking objects slowly. She got her prescription for glasses but those will have to wait a bit since Cathy’s leaving town next week.
Recently, Cathy noticed this…thing…on Maria’s eyeball. It’s kind of like a patch of roughness on the border between the iris and the white. You can’t really even see it unless the light is reflecting off of it. She pointed it out to the doctor and he said it is phlyctenulosis (pronounced flick-ten-u-LOW-sis). According to Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, that’s “A nodular hypersensitive disease of the corneal and conjunctival epithelium of the eye caused by an endogenous toxin”. OK, that’s not much help. Basically, the blepharitis and/or chalazion released toxins onto the surface of her eyeball. She had a hypersensitivity reaction, almost like an allergic reaction, and got this little spot of inflammation. If left untreated it can create scarring and blindness. Oh, goody.
So she’s getting erythromycin ointment to see if that clears it up. Plus we need to get back to cleaning her eyelids. Sue is the only one who does that consistently. As Cathy says over and over, “What would we do without Sue?”.
The wind here has kicked up a lot of dust and Maria’s sinuses are obviously bothering her. She’s been stuffy and cranky. I noticed that she will sniff up the snot which, while icky, shows an awareness of it and a knowledge of what to do about it so it’s another cognitive step. Before she would just…ooze. She’s also learned to clear her throat, though she started doing that a few months back.
Andy forgot to mention the most exciting part–when the eye doc sat down in front of Maria and smiled at her, she looked right at him and smiled! It was pretty exciting!