The Battle of the Eyes

Although Ella's eyes are one of her best features, they have been yet another one of the challenges she has faced. Geez--What can I even say about her eyes? Maybe I'll let the pictures tell the story...

This is Ella on her 1st Birthday. You can see how misaligned her eyes are. And, according to the opthamologist, she was seeing double or even triple--Yikes! We sometimes said that she had "googly eyes". Of course, we meant that in the most loving way possible:) This is 3 days post eye muscle surgery in November of 2008. It's incredible how fast you can see results from this procedure. Ella started making tons of progress in her motor and social skills development after her eyes were fixed the first time.

Here she is with her first pair of glasses. Cute, but a huge pain and they didn't stay on long enough to make any difference.


This past spring, we noticed that Ella was falling down a lot, and her balance was getting worse. It turns out that her eyes were misaligned again and she needed more than just glasses. We were so "lucky" to get to do patching with her. She hated it and I hated it even more! Under her jacket are restraints on her arms in an attempt to keep the patch on. We called her the "robot pirate" when she was patched. In this picture, however, she is sporting her "Robot/Pirate/Princess/Cowgirl" look.

Here's my sad girl just a couple of hours after her most recent eye muscle surgery in June. She is wearing arm restraints so she didn't rub her eyes--neither one of us liked them. She looks pretty beat-up. However, the bruises on her eyes and forehead aren't from surgery. She had fallen and smashed her head hard enough to blacken her eyes just a few days earlier, because her balance and depth perception were so off.

Ella is such a great example of strength and determination. Even though she struggles with her vision, I think we would all benefit from seeing life through Ella's beautiful baby blues, if even for just one day.