Ezekiel Ray.....what a boy! He is by far the funniest little person I have ever met! Zeke's whole body radiates personality, and he is loved by everyone!! God sure had a plan for Zeke when he made him. This is Zeke's story.....
We were so excited to find out that we were pregnant with Zeke in January of 2008. After being told by doctors that we would never conceive without the help of drugs, you can just imagine our surprise when finding out Zeke was on his way!Everyone told us once we adopted, we would get pregnant...sure enough they were right! My pregnancy with Zeke was great! No morning sickness,no heartburn, no weight gain!
It was the perfect pregnancy! Zeke was born on September 17, 2008. He was in an all fired up hurry to get here, and was born in 2 hours....start to finish! Not bad for your 1st!
At the time Ryan was working across the state in Startbuck, WA. We thought for SURE he would have enough time to drive home if I called him right away....I mean, 1st baby's are supposed to take a long time right??! Well poor daddy missed it! Zeke was about 5 hours old before he met his Daddy for the 1st time.
Zeke was a great baby..very relaxed, happy and never fussy. Thank goodness! Cory loved his new brother and wanted to hold him all the time.
Just about Christmas time my sister noticed that Zeke's left eye looked crossed. Of course when she said this I said..."NO! His eye is NOT crossed!" Gee....what could she be thinking about my sweet little boy? But wait.....his eye DOES look a little crossed....but I must just be worried now that she said something. Well.. about 2 days after that comment....Ryan and I decided...yes,
his eye is a bit crossed. It was strange....his eye was never crossed before.
How does it just start being crossed?
I took Zeke to the Doctor and he sent us to a Children's Optometry Physician to have Zeke further checked out.I had no idea what to expect at the eye Doc. How did they check the vision? He can't read letters yet. How is Zeke going to react to a stranger looking in this eyes? Zeke did awesome! He sat in the "big" chair and let Dr. Badorek do everything she needed to without so much as a fuss. She put some drops in Zeke's eyes that not allow him to move them. Only the brain could control the movement. Then she held different lenses up to Zeke's eye's and as she got closer to the correct prescription, his eye would become straight! It was amazing! I have never seen anything like it!
At the end of the examine she said " Well...we have a couple of different things going on with Zeke's eyes" Great....you can only imagine the pounding in my heart.What was wrong with my 16 months old eyes!!
She said that Zeke has Amblyopia - otherwise known as lazy eye,[1] is a disorder of the visual system that is characterized by poor or lack of vision in an eye that is otherwise physically normal, or out of proportion to associated structural abnormalities. It has been estimated to affect 1–5% of the population.[2]
Amblyopia means that visual stimulation either fails to transmit or is poorly transmitted through the optic nerve to the brain for a continuous period of time. It often occurs during early childhood, resulting in poor or dim vision. Amblyopia normally affects only one eye, but it is possible to be amblyopic in both eyes if both fail to receive good, clear visual images. Detecting the condition in early childhood increases the chance of successful treatment.
The colloquialism "lazy eye" is frequently used to refer to amblyopia, the term is inaccurate because there is no "laziness" of the eye itself. The term "lazy eye" is imprecise because it is a layman's term for strabismus, particularly exotropia. [3]
He also was dealing with
Strabismus - is a condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other.[2] It typically involves a lack of coordination between the extraocular muscles, which prevents bringing the gaze of each eye to the same point in space and preventing proper binocular vision, which may adversely affect depth perception.
Strabismus can be either a disorder of the brain in coordinating the eyes, or of one or more of the relevant muscles' power or direction of motion. Difficult strabismus problems are usually co-managed between orthoptists and ophthalmologists.
So on top of that my sweet baby has very poor vision! She told me that the eyes can't "grow" if they can't see together. Zeke was born farsighted as most everyone is. The problem is that his eye's didn't grow. so now the brain thinks that the left eye is straight when in fact it's turned in.
Of course a million and one questions and thoughts went through my head in a matter of seconds. How will he keep them on? How long will he need to wear them? Do they even make glasses small enough? How thick with his lenses be? Do you mean my sweet baby hasn't been able to see all this time? What if he doesn't know me when he does "See" me? (stupid, I know...but I did think it!)
Dr. Barorek told me not to worry....everything would be fine, and that she would do her best to help heal Zeke's eyes and get him seeing again.
When we sent to get Zeke's 1st pair of glasses, the look on his face was priceless! He put those little glasses on, and he COULD SEE!!!
He loved his new glasses! He loved wearing them! I think because he could see, he would rather leave them on than run around without them. I was soooo happy!
Over the next year we went to the eye Doc. every 4 weeks, we changed prescriptions almost every time we were there, unfortunately to a stronger prescription, with more prism. Zeke's eyes just weren't improving with the glasses.
Dr. Badorek decided to send us for a 2nd opinion. She sent us to Dr. Lanart, and very well known Children's Eye Surgeon from Seattle. Thankfully he travels to the Tri-cities once a month, so we were able to meet with him there instead of driving 6 hours to Seattle.He checked Zeke over and said yes...Zeke would need surgery. But 1st we needed to get the vision in Zeke's left eye closer to the vision in his right eye. Right now he said Zeke's prescription is +3.50 on the right eye and +6.50 in the left! So how do we accomplish this??? You patch the "good" eye, the one that Zeke uses to see, and force the "bad" eye to work for itself. We would need to patch for 10 hours a day.
Even this presented some challenges! Really Lord....couldn't one thing be easy?!
The patches are sooooo sticky that when we took the 1st one off it literally ripped Zeke's cheek skin off! Poor little guy! We then began trial and error of finding the best way to put on and take off these patches. We ended up buying a Adhesive "barrier" to wipe on around the eye before placing the patch, and the use a Adhesive "remover" to get the thing off! Zeke of course is a real trooper, and once we got it figured out, was fine with the removal process.
We went back to see Dr Lanart about 2 weeks ago and he said that Zeke's eye has improved greatly! Thank you Jesus! Now he is ready for surgery!
Zeke is scheduled for Eye Surgery on August 4th. He will be having surgery on BOTH eyes. Dr. Lanart said that the success is much higher if done on both.
So now we are patching for 6 hours a day. Waiting for our surgery day!
I try not to think of all the "what ifs" that can happen to my baby boy as the Anesthesiologist puts him under... and then there's the knife....I know that God is in control and that his plan for Zeke is perfect. But the Mama in me is still a bit worried.
I will continue "Zeke's Story" as we continue through this journey to healthy "straight" eyes!
~Jolene
