Patches

    Over the years, I’ve had many favorite childhood toys, but the ones that mean the most to me today are the ones that helped me through major life challenges. The single most important childhood possession to me was my stuffed dog Patches. Patches is a scruffy, and very floppy dog that my parents bought for me when I was 4 to help boost my confidence. My preschool teacher, Miss Brenda, noticed I couldn’t focus my right eye on the story books she would read aloud to my class (in other words, my right eye would wander). When she communicated this to my parents, they took me to see an optometrist. When I went to the eye doctor for the first time, I couldn’t even read the big “E” on the chart, making me legally blind. My parents also discovered that I had amblyopia, which is sometimes called “lazy eye.” I picked out my first pair of thin green glasses--and with it, an eyepatch. I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t have to wear a pirate style skull-and-crossbones patch. Instead, I wore a cloth patch, usually with some kind of unicorn, puppy, or butterfly stitched onto it.

The patches, although designed to be cute and as comfortable as possible, were still hot, itchy, and not like anything that the other kids in my classes ever wore. Adding to the patches’ general discomfort was the fact that I could barely see when I first began patching since I had my stronger (left) eye covered; as a result, I was forced to stumble blindly throughout my day, clutching Patches as hard as I could. Most of my patches had a purple background with a design stitched onto a white square, like the butterfly one pictured here,

but one patch was different. It was made to look like a puppy’s face with little ears poking out over the top, and it was my favorite by far. The puppy patch was my very first patch and it came with a stuffed dog who resembled the one depicted by my patch, and who had its very own patch over one eye. I fell in love with this dog immediately, and ever so creatively named it “Patches.” For years, whenever I felt like I was the only girl in the world who had to patch, I at least had Patches for company, who was just like me (albeit a little furrier).

That first traumatic experience at the optometrist’s office was only one of many eye doctor visits. When I was in kindergarten my vision improved to 20/20 and I was allowed to go patch-free. That victory was short-lived, however, as my vision had regressed again by the time of my next appointment, and thus nine months later I had to begin patching again. Every time my ophthalmologist would reduce my prescribed daily patching time my eye would regress slightly, and I would have to regain the ground I’d lost by adding more fine motor therapy during my patching time each day (usually Perler Beads, some kind of mosaic tile craft, or playing on my DS, something I was always happy to do). Throughout the next three years, every two months I would have a check-up with Dr. Knupp, my pediatric ophthalmologist, and for every appointment I was sure to drag Patches along with me. Eventually, the time between those visits grew to three months, and then six months, until I finally graduated to annual eye exams. After Dr. Knupp  moved away, my parents switched my eye doctors several times, always in the hopes of finding the most relevant doctor, someone who knew the most recent science behind my condition. My current doctor is a developmental optometrist who practices in Fairbury and Bloomington, Illinois, and I still get scared every time I go visit her. Although a regression in my vision at age 16 is unlikely, until I reach adulthood, I’ll never have a 100% guarantee that my right eye hasn’t regressed and I’m back to some form of patching. 

I ended up having to patch for five years in total, during which Patches was with me almost anywhere I went. After about three years, my daily patching time was cut down to just two hours a day, but for the first year I was stuck wearing the patch 24/7. It would have been easy to complain about my patching, but after hearing stories of other kids who weren’t as successful with their patching, I always tried to keep quiet about it. My family knew a girl at church who also had to patch, but because her parents didn’t catch her lazy eye before she turned seven (when the visual pathway becomes less malleable and more resistant to change), she eventually lost all the progress she had made from patching and now has to wear one opaque contact--obscuring the sight in her lazy eye--in order to prevent double vision. I’ll still have to wear glasses for the rest of my life, but I see them as incredibly freeing after so many years with a patch attached to the left lens and a stuffed puppy to go along with it.

My brother and I with our favorite stuffed animals