The Eye Doctors

Today, Ella had another outing. This time it was to the eye doctors. We sure don’t like taking her out with all this cold and sickness but we have no choice. I had to feed her in the waiting room. I was prepared to karate chop anyone who came even close. Fortunately, we just got glances and stares from the front desk. Two of the women who worked at the front desk kept smiling at Ella. At first I thought “yeah, I know she is so stinkin’ cute,” but then after feeling them staring and smiling the whole time, I started to feel a little like a show or something. Finally, the one woman asked how much she weighed and I told her proudly 6 lbs. I also told her that she was born at 2 lbs. 7 oz. and that she is big now. She turned to the other woman and they once again smiled. I guess they had a bet. It took awhile and then finally when the technician brought us back she said she was looking for our file which wasn’t there because this was our first visit. The tech put three doses of drops in Ella’s eyes. Ella is so good about everything. After a little wait, Dr. F. came in to look into her eyes. He made some corny small talk, tortured Ella’s eyes with a magnifying glass, his fingers and a light, and then told us to look at a picture of the human eyeball. He explained that the retina grows around the back of the whole eye and that Ella’s was not quite there yet. When I asked him about the level one ROP, he gave me this vague answer (there must be a class doctors take on how to confuse your patient (or patient’s parents) enough to keep them from being able to form another question). I even asked him twice because I obviously did not understand his answer. Both Elaine and I heard his answer. We are both not stupid and neither of us could understand his hocus pocus the second time around. So she has immature retinas and we are not sure about the level one ROP or if that is the level one ROP – we will research ourselves. He also wondered why she was back so soon, even thought Dr. Q. told us to get her checked again in 2 weeks. Needless to say, our next appointment is with another doctor closer to home in two weeks.