Astigmatism

We almost cancelled the appointment.

In fact, I did call the centre to cancel the appointment, which was supposed to be on the following day, the 4th. of April. The main reason was that we thought it would not be successful - Aisyah would be very agitated every time she saw any `checking equipment'. We had a hard time to calm her down when we went for our eye checks at Specsavers the other day. About a month before that, she had a swollen cheek, and when the doctor tried to examine her, she screamed as loudly as she could, as if she was being forcefully taken away from us! It did not go well at all. And now, we were supposed to take her for her eye check! We really thought it would not go well again, and we would only be wasting the hospital's time, hence the call to the appointment centre.

I explained the reason to the person receiving the call, and she replied that she would pass the note to the relevant department. Less than 10 minutes after putting down the phone, it rang again and my wife picked it up. It was from the office of the orthoptist, where the appointment was supposed to be. The lady had called about the cancelled appointment, and this time my wife had to explain what we thought. The lady on the other side then persuaded us not to cancel the eye check, and she managed to convince us that they had long experience with all sorts of children behaviour and the meeting would be fine.

We took her word for it and brought Aisyah to the orthoptist. We sure glad we did.

It was first detected that Aisyah had some sort of problem during an eye examination at her school. The only report we got from her was about `playing pirate' with a nurse, apparently referring to the method of the examination where one eye is covered at one time. Then we received a letter from the hospital about the appointment, stating that further check was needed. Before that, it never occurred to us that her vision was not normal. She had never shown any indication of that. To us, she had always been `perfect'.

On the way to the hospital, we gradually tried to build up her confidence, in anticipation of her probable reaction. We had no idea whether it would work, but we tried anyway. When we arrived there and told to wait until called, she was still fine and happily looking at pictures in the magazine. So far so good.

Finally, we were called into the orthoptist's room. The orthoptist was a lady, who simply was amazing. From the time we step in, she made Aisyah feel very comfortable, and she managed to do all the checks without any agitation at all on the part of Aisyah! We were so thankful, and we made sure we let her know that. She confirmed that there was a problem with Aisyah's right eye, and after another series of check by an optician in the next room, we got the results. Aisyah has astigmatism in her right eye. It would need to be corrected by glasses, so that it would not get worse.

Aisyah wearing glasses? Hmm, that is yet to be seen.