Pediatric Opthamologist

Today was our first appointment with Dr. O'Malley. He is who our pediatrician referred us to. I was happy about that since I had 3 others refer us to him as well. We brought Kaiden's medical file (all two half pages) from China with us but he didn't give much credit to them. I was really impressed with him. He was very personable and handled Kaiden very well. He's been practicing for 30 years but doesn't act like he could be that old. He said right off that bat that it wasn't a retinoblastoma or it'd be coming out of his ear by now. That's a relief! But I still wonder why he sat on the waiting child list for so long. His medical condition was never updated on the waiting child list after his second procedure where they ruled out the retinoblastoma, almost certainly. I think it's because he was waiting for us to realize that he was waiting for us : )

Kaiden did well for the first part of the exam. Then it was time to dialate his eyes and sit and wait for 20 minutes. That went quickly because there were some very poorly behaved boys in the waiting room that were entertaining to watch : ) Kaiden did not like this second part of the exam. He cried through the entire thing but Dr. O'Malley worked very quickly with him. He said that in his 30 years of practicing and having practiced on 5 different continents (including China multiple times) that he has never seen anything like this in a child so young. We are still baffled that they even found this in China when he was so young. He just looks cross eyed to us. Dr. O'Malley will have to do some research and finds Kaiden's case very interesting. But the important thing is that it is not cancer, it is treatable, and there is no rush to do anything about it. The next step is to see a neurologist which we already had scheduled for in May because of his developmental delays. O'Malley said that at this point, we'll take a wait and see approach. Give him some time to develop and see how he progresses on his own. He doesn't want to push Kaiden through a bunch of tests right away until he's been seen by these other specialists. He did describe one test that he will want to do but that requires anesthesia, so again, it can wait. We'll see the neurologist (which happens to be who he'd recommend we see also) and then come back to him in 8 weeks. We didn't get an exact 'diagnosis', something to call this condition, but he described in great detail what was going on. There is some kind of mass sitting in the back of his eye interfering with his vision.

Pete was with me for this appointment but we can see many, many more in our future. He won't be able to take time off of work for so many but he wanted to make it to this one. Besides, he gets to go to all of the immunization appointments alone : )

Next week is his OT assessment.