Ambloypia and allergy update

As I have mentioned before on this blog, my daughter Lexie suffers from eczema (exacerbated by her allergies) and has amblyopia. In the past two weeks we have visited the ophthalmologist and the allergist so I thought I would give an update.

Amblyopia

Lexie was diagnosed with amblyopia in June of 2012. We started patching her “lazy” eye at the end of August 2012. A year later there has been a VAST improvement. Her doctor was thrilled with the results. In the beginning we patched her “good” eye (which causes the lazy eye to have to work) for four hours a day. It then went down to two hours a day. Now we are down to just a half an hour each day! We go back again in two months for a follow up.

At the appointment he also dilated her eyes to see if she needs a new prescription for glasses. Wow did her prescription change. Her vision has gotten so much better but not clear enough for her not have glasses. She picked out new frames – red with butterflies on the sides. They aren’t the ones I would have chosen but hey, I don’t have to wear them. As long as she likes them and hopefully wears them. We have been fighting with her lately to get her to wear her current glasses.

Allergies

We had not been to the allergist in over a year as the antihistamine prescribed (Xyzal daily) had been handling her scratching relatively well. But when it came time to refill it this month, they wanted an appointment before renewing it. The appointment came at a good time as the week prior, Lexie had attended a bible camp and had come back with some bumps on her legs. She proceeded to scratch them which of course made her legs look bad. My husband wanted the doctor to prescribe a steroid to clean up the marks while I was thinking a prescription for an antibiotic might be enough. It turns out that we both got our wish. I came out of the appointment with a record SEVEN prescriptions.

Besides the oral steroids and antibiotics, the doctor renewed her antihistamine and prescribed a second one for nighttime to see if that would reduce any scratching at night. She also gave us one for a nasal spray to use during the few months of a year that Lexie’s allergies result in a runny nose.

The last two prescriptions were for emergency drugs. While at the appointment, I relayed to the doctor an incident in March where after we had been out to eat, Lexie began complaining that her throat hurt. Within an hour, she was covered in hives. We ended up giving her Benadryl and calling the Nurse’s line. The nurse increased the amount of Benadryl we gave her to 2 teaspoons and suggested taking her to the ER if she didn’t improve in thirty minutes. Luckily within thirty minutes, Lexie was fine. The thing that concerned us and her doctor was her throat hurting. It might have been because it was closing due to the allergic reaction. So we got a prescription for an Epi Pen Jr. and a lesson on how to use it. The last prescription was for a chewable steroid to keep in a medicine key chain that had some Claritin in it. We are to give Lexie the pills if she ever breaks out in hives like that again. Of course we haven’t had an incident like that again so far but the scary thing is we don’t know what triggered it.