You Down With ROP?

When Max was in the NICU, he was diagnosed with Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) when he was a few weeks old (around what would have been 30 weeks gestation, if he'd stayed put). ROP is a preemie condition that causes the blood vessels in the eye to go haywire, which can cause the retina to detach. It can cause vision loss and blindness -- Stevie Wonder was a preemie and his blindness was caused by ROP. Researchers think that the extra oxygen that preemies need may contribute to the condition, and since extreme preemies usually require breathing support for quite a while, it's is something that a lot of early preemies have.

Max had a moderately severe case, but thankfully his ROP regressed on its own, without the need for laser surgery to zap out the rogue blood vessels (which usually saves the vision, but often leaves scar tissue and causes some vision loss/issues of its own). He was followed by the pediatric opthamologists while he was in the NICU and he went back for several follow-up appointments after he came home. His last "big baby" eye exam was when he was about eight months old. At that point, the doctor said his vision was normal for his age and he was discharged from any additional appointments.

Since Max is now in school and old enough for routine eye exams, I wanted to take him back to see his opthamologist for a checkup, just to make sure everything really was fine. I made an appointment six months ago and, in spite of an unexpected change from PPO health insurance to HMO insurance (necessitating a frantic, last-minute referral from our pediatrician), we made the trek in to the eye center today.

Given that Max's opthamologist is notorious for running late and appointments can take a VERY long time, I took the morning off of work so I could take Max to his appointment. We also tried to get an early appointment, hopefully to cut down on wait time. We made it to the office in good time, in spite of the fact that I initially drove right past it, because they've entirely remodeled the building since the last time we were there. Max was totally thrilled to be going to the eye doctor -- you'd think he'd have had enough of doctors, but he gets excited about going just about anywhere!

We checked in and Max happily looked at the fish and checked out the cool indoor playhouse/slide that they had in the office. We were called back into the exam room pretty quickly and one of the "little dog" doctors did his first exam. Max had to look at and identify a bunch of different pictures and the doctor examined his eyes. To Max's great delight, they cued up Toy Story 2 for him to watch while they did part of the exam -- and they even had it set up to start at his VERY FAVORITE part. Then the doctor put in the eye drops to dilate his eyes (which he wasn't too happy about) and sent us back out in the waiting room while we waited for the drops to take effect.

It didn't take long for them to call us back and another doctor completed the exam. Max was a total trooper for the whole appointment -- he cooperated, was polite and friendly, listed to what the doctor told him, and minded his Mama. He was fascinated with all the exam equipment and lenses and buttons and grilled the doctor on what everything was. As it turned out, we never even needed to see our "big dog" doctor -- Max's eyes are very healthy and his vision is fine. Unless we have any problems, we don't need to go back. And, as the icing on the cake, we made it in and out of the doctor's office in under an hour -- that's definitely an all-time record for us!

Since Max was such a good boy, we stopped at Mama's favorite bagel place on the way home and got some bagels and fragels (deep-friend raisin bagels covered with cinnamon and sugar) to take home to Dad and Molly. Given the reaction to the goodies when we got home, I think we've created another generation of fragel lovers.