After a couple of weeks of wearing the Ortopad patches that we got from the doctor’s office, Zoe asked for patches that were a bit “sparklier.” The doctor’s office only had the boy patterned patches, which are actually pretty cool – space ships, and pirates, and airplanes – but still, she’s the one wearing the patch, and if it’s sparkly patches make patching easier, well then, sparkly patches it is. I bought a pack of the Ortopad Elite, which have glitter accents. She loves the patterns, but WOW are those patches sticky. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get the first one off her face at all, and she was really upset with how much it hurt. We ended up trying a few things, including me putting the patch on my hand first to try to get some of the adhesive off before putting it on her face. But what seems to work best so far is for me to put a fairly thick layer of moisturizer around her left eye before putting the patch on. It keeps it from sticking quite so strongly, though it’s still staying put.

I can’t help but imagine Zoe 40 years from now noticing that her left eye has far fewer wrinkles than her right eye and wondering why.

Edited to add: I should add that Amblyopia Kids had a good article recently about stickiness in adhesive patches that’s definitely worth a read.