UPDATE!

This past week my daughters blue eyes were examined on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  We go back on Monday afternoon, and it looks like she will continue to have many appointments going forward.

On Thursday, the vision on her left eye was 300/20!  That was a low point for her, because she has slowly started to improve since then.  The 24 hour culture came back and showed one colony of gram negative bacteria.  Strange, because usually there are many colonies when a bacteria is present.  Fortunately all three types of antibiotic eye drops work on this type of bacteria, but we are not sure if this is a normal amount of bacteria  or if this is the root cause of her eye problems.  Or was it in fact a severe allergic reaction?   The iritis is resolving too.   I am not sure that we will ever know exactly, but our eye doctor is working closely with our allergy doctor in any case.

This morning (Sunday) my girl feels much better.  Her eye is less swollen & red on the outside, and inside it looks so much better!  I can still see the white spot, but it looks smaller.  She feels like it is smaller too.  What a relief!!!

She will return to school tomorrow (after missing five days) even though she cannot wear make up or contacts.    Thank you for all your prayers, texts, and phone calls this week!!

Quick story for you:  Reaching out to all possible resources, my hubby spoke to a nurse here in St. Paul, who preceded to tell a story about a friend of hers, whose son had a condition in his eye that sounds familiar to our daughter.  This boy was also a competitive swimmer in Minnesota (this was about 10 years ago), and he had months and months of treatment to resolve his condition, and as a result he can no longer wear contacts, ever.  Yikes.

Of course I had to ask about this, I mean, my girl is a competitive swimmer, and in fact was in a pool in St. Paul the very day this happened.  Dr. Lang immediately knew what I was talking about, and said that one of his biopsies was to check for this very thing.  What is it?  An amoeba!  He said it doesn’t appear that this is what is going on, but OMGosh, an amoeba!?!  He said this is only possible when the pool chemicals are not balanced properly, and it gives me shivers to think about.  My kids, as well as most of their friends, are competitive swimmers, who go from pool to pool to pool for practice and competitions.  We all know when the pool chemicals are not balanced properly.  Sometimes our kids get chlorine burn on their skin, sometimes the stitching in their suits bleaches out, and more than once I have heard that the kids have had trouble with their flip turns because the sides of the wall were slippery.   All from the chemicals either being too high or too low.  Perhaps I’ll become one of those crazy tiger-moms and carry my own water testing kit with me?   Makes me wonder about all the times I hear about kids suffering from ear infections, or swimmers ear too.