me and cooper
Originally uploaded by megan_n_smith_99
finally, a cat to match.
cooper is having some nerve problems and one eye is not working correctly. but his appearance sort of matches mine.
i was born without the ability to see out of both eyes at the same time. and my eyes were crossed as well, which was corrected with surgery. however as have gotten older they have tracked more and more poorly. you can see in this photo that my eyes are not looking in the same direction. my eye doctor has been pushing me to have surgery again, but i don't feel ready.
in the meantime cooper and i are keeping each other lopsided company. fortunately i am not also having trouble with my legs and paws like he is. cooper is my best cat-friend. he lives up the street and we have been good friends for years. he is not in any pain, is under a vet's care and so far he and gets over these episodes of nerve problems. he's a real sweetheart, but skittish.
4 comments:
Both you and Cooper are such sweeties! I didn't know that about your eyes, didn't even notice it when we've been together in person. For not being able to track with both eyes, you certainly do some amazing (understatement of the year) beadwork, especially using those iddy-biddy beads that we both love so much. What benefits does your Dr. believe surgery will offer? It would have to be a LOT for me to consider having anyone connect a knife to my eyeballs! You and Cooper look great together!
Hugs, Robin A.
well. the surgery would be a repeat of the same surgery i had at age 4. it would align my eyes. which might alleviate some of my frequent eyestrain. mostly it would just give me a more normal appearance. the doctor thinks it might be the push for my brain to step up to the plate and do a better job of putting together a world view out of my 2 seperate views (one from each eye) but i doubt that personally, as that shift did not occur the last time i had the surgery.
i think i will be ready to consider it if and when i get to the point where people can't tell if i am looking at them when i talk to them. i don't want to have communication issues with people. it has gotten quite a bit worse in the last 2 years, but not to that point! yes, the concept of eye surgery is pretty intimidating! and like you, i value my hands and eyes highly!
Mine have gotten worse in recent years as well - The right eye is dominant and the left wanders, so if it's late at night and I'm standing close to someone, esp. not wearing glasses, they turn around to see what I'm looking at.
Last doctor I asked said to do nothing ("you aren't a model or a newscaster, so it's not affecting your career...") But I wonder where it stops becoming a vanity thing and starts becoming a health thing. Hate to lose vision in the weaker eye!
One doctor told me a few years ago that if I wanted, I could pursue vision therapy - not covered by insurance of course. Sure sounds worth a try, vs. surgery.
dr. weaver said that in a case as severe as mine, it was not considered cosmetic surgery, it was considered corrective surgery. some reasearch i did on-line indicated that adults often needed to provide additional info to their insurance company to get the surgery pre-approved since it is not usually done on adults. if they believed it was purely cosmetic it would not be approved, but she did not think that would be a problem in my case. (i don't know if mine is worse than yours, i think maybe it always was a bit worse. certainly my eyes have never worked together as well as yours do. my doctor told me that muscle therapy did not work, but someone else told me they knew someone it had worked on. she said there was some sort of dvd about it. i think it would be worth trying if you could get a dvd of it. at least before surgery.
brent has a friend who recently had the surgery done, she had double vision before she had it done. they actually over-corrected and she was almost crosseyed, but then her eye drifted out so it was aligned with the other one after a few months. she took a few days off work. the website i saw suggested taking a week off work following the surgery. other than some minor changes it is pretty much the same as the surgery we had at age 4. all the new advancements in eye surgery have not had much of an impact on this particular surgery.
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