Shout out to my Amazing Parents

Ever since I've gone public about my eyes I've felt like I need to give credit where credit is due!  I can see how an outsider reading all this might wonder why my parents didn't do anything about my eyes when I was younger.

It is time to set the record straight!  My parents were amazing!  When I was a tiny little baby, about 3 months old, they started realizing that my eyes were not lined up straight.  I think that was about the time that they started taking me to eye doctors. Not just any eye doctor though, they shopped around and didn't stop until they'd found the best.  Right away they started patching and having me wear special prism type glasses that would help start correcting and realigning my eyes.

Here is a picture of me before I had any surgeries when I got a little sunburn with my patch on...pardon the slobber.  You can see that my eyes were both turned in pretty severely.

 I found this little book and appointment card in my scrapbook.  It just made me feel a wave of gratitude for my parents.  I was the fourth child.  They had older kids just like I do and were busy and then this was all thrown at them.  It must have been so scary and overwhelming.  So many appointments and trying to get me to keep my glasses on all day.  My mom always talks about how at first she struggled with it and just thought it was really hard, and then one of her neighbors had her little boy go completely blind and she was able to see how lucky I was to have such a minor problem.

  I don't know if you can read the caption on this picture, it says "This is me on October 2nd 1986.  I am 6 months old and this is the day before my first eye surgery.  Dr. Williams says I see double and he will try to straighten my eye out."  I kind of had to wonder why my mom took me to get professional pictures taken the day before my surgery.  A few thoughts came to mind, I was going under general anesthesia, were they worried about the chance that I wouldn't wake back up or maybe that the doctors might make a mistake and I'd be blind.  Or maybe they just wanted to document the "before" picture.  Either way, my heart goes out to them.  I know that if Zac and I were taking our sweet Everly in for eye surgery tomorrow, we would be a mess!

This is me after my first two surgeries, you can see that my eyes were so much straighter after those surgeries!  I had another one when I was 7 and continued with glasses and patching until I was about 9 and they said I was better.  Even after we moved to Idaho, they still would drive me all the way to Salt Lake for appointments so that I could have the best possible doctors.  My mom has a box of all the glasses that I wore throughout the years from the tiniest little ones to the obnoxious mickey mouse and donald duck ones I was in love with when I got older.  They are precious treasures for me to look at.  They represent my parent's dedication and just make something that I can't really remember seem so real.  Thank you mom and dad!

This last picture is of me as a senior.  My eyes were fairly straight (I think) until I started having kids.  I know that my right eye would wander when I was tired, but nothing too serious.  They got me to adulthood with great vision and incredibly straight eyes, considering where I started.  Now, I'm adult and my eyes aren't straight anymore and the ball is in my court to fix it, but both of them are still so supportive and involved and helpful.  I am a very lucky girl to have such a great support system.