Jessie Lynn shared this story and her amazing photo shoot of her daughter’s last day of patching on the facebook group. Many thanks to her for giving permission to share it here as well! -Ann Z
After 2646 hours of patching, 3 surgeries, and too many drops to count, our girl is finally done! Follow up visits to happen, but vision in her injured eye is 20/25 and holding steady for a year now! HUGE thank you to OHSU Casey Eye Institute and Dr Lorri Wilson for her amazing care! Pictures are from her literal last time of taking off her patch ! (Photo credits: Jessie Arambul Photography)
— Jessie Lynn
The story
I asked Jessie for a little more background on her daughter’s story, here’s what she sent:
When she had just turned 3, my daughter pulled on an exercise tube that had a handle tied to a deck railing. It snapped at the handle and the metal part connecting the handle to the rubber snapped back and hit her in the eye. She ended up with a total hyphema of the left eye (a hyphema is when blood collects in the front of the eye, usually due to injury). Our eye doctor sent us to OHSU Doernbecher ER that night. Her pressure was 33 in that eye (normal is in the range of 12-22). They were able to get the pressure down and referred us to Casey Eye and to Dr. Wilson.
The hyphema dissolved and she seemed ok. But over the next 2 weeks she developed a total cataract of her left eye and was almost completely blind in that eye. We went back to Dr Wilson and she scheduled surgery for 3 days later. They placed an IOL implant and we had a month of too many drops to count. We also started patching as the two weeks she couldn’t see out of that eye had greatly hurt her vision . She started wearing her glasses with a bifocal at this time as well. After about a year of good progress her vision started regressing again, and Dr Wilson noticed the back of her natural lens had clouded. They did a laser surgery to open up a small hole at the back of it. However, her scar tissue was so thick that it didn’t work well and we had to go back for a third surgery about 8 months later. We were patching 4 hours daily this entire time. After the last surgery she achieved 20/25 vision at her first appointment. We had 3 more months of 4 hour patching, then we started reducing by an hour every 3 months. Until Friday when Dr. Wilson declared her patch free! We will still have to go back and more sure there is no regression, however she feels it seems unlikely. So we are definitely ecstatic at this point!
For Little Eyes 