Blessed Enough to be Speechless ~ Guest Blogging Day

Image "Mother Giving Hand to Child" Courtesy of David Castillo Dominici/freedigitalphotos.net

While he was saying this to me, 

I bowed with my face toward the ground and was speechless.  Daniel 10:15  NIV

A few weeks ago we were at an ophthalmologist's office.  My daughter was meeting this specialist for the first time as she has several eye conditions which include, but are not limited to; aniridia (no irises in the eyes), and glaucoma (high pressure within the eyes).

If you've never seen how doctors measure the eye pressures in children and infants, they typically use an item called a tonopen.  This pen must be placed directly on the eye ball, right where the iris and pupil are located.  The pen takes several readings which reflect how high the pressure in the eye is. 

Because my daughter doesn't have irises, she is photosensitive; meaning, she has extreme sensitivity to light.  She wears sunglasses at all times when she is outside, even if the sun is low on the horizon or behind clouds. 

Keep in mind that my family just moved from the Midwest to the far West under a year ago.  We have become acquainted with all of our new doctors, but don't know them NEARLY as well as we did our doctors in Wisconsin.  Often, I just assume that the doctor knows what he or she is doing; but that's not the best thing when it comes to rare diseases.

For example, when the doctor was trying to check my daughter's eye pressures with the tonopen, she made her tip her head back and stare straight up into an overhead fluorescent light.  It didn't dawn on me to tell the doctor to turn the light off, nor to ask her to dim the light.  My daughter kept closing her eyes while the doctor had the tonopen set on the eye ball attempting to get a reading.  

I watched, silently, as they both struggled to do their jobs:  my daughter was struggling to protect her eye from the blinding light and the doctor was struggling to get a reading as quickly and accurately as possible.

It was excruciating to watch.  

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