More confusion...

Yesterday's visit to the doctor (not the retina specialist but the neighborhood eye doctor who first suspected my son had Coats) was confusing, to say the least. My aim was to find out if the little brat needed glasses. A macular problem would also show up in an eye exam (because of the gray spot I mentioned earlier). But on the first visit, the doctor said he needed to dilate his eyes.

So yesterday, that's what they did. And after looking at his eyes for a really long time, the doc announced that the exudates had increased since he'd last seen my son (in July, when he first suspected Coats). "He needs more laser," he said.

We explained the at the retina specialist had said that he would do some more laser if the exudates didn't get absorbed on their own. And this was just two weeks back. "Well, it's not an emergency, but from what I know of this disease, things can deteriorate very rapidly," said the doctor. My heart sank. Worse, he said that there was some refractive error (meaning he might need glasses) but because his eyes were dilated, he couldn't make a definitive diagnosis. (Okay, so why did he dilate the little fellow's eyes in the first place?) I felt like kicking myself for having started the whole vision check thing in the first place. And suddenly, there was this moment of hatred because this doctor seemed to be raising an alarm for no reason. And hatred for the fact that he could be right.

Anyway, we have to take our son back there after three days ("once the effects of the dilation wear off completely") to see if the refractive error is significant enough to warrant glasses.

In the meantime, my husband and I discussed what we'd been told and came to the conclusion that logically, it made sense that there were more exudates since July since the blood vessels kept leaking between July and October. Also, we trust our retina specialist. He's very blunt and doesn't mince his words, so we doubt he'd have ignored something that was urgent.

We also don't want Poppet to go through another "dilated eyes" episode so soon. The current plan is to take him to his retina specialist a couple of weeks from now, just to be sure. And also ask him a bit more about floaters and other precautions that our son should take to avoid eye strain or inadvertently worsen his Coats. There's also another, very well respected doctor in another city from whom we took a second opinion. I hope to get him on the phone and speak to him also, but that would be weird because he can't see my son's eyes right now and so, asking for an opinion would be unreasonable.

My instincts are usually good, and this time, something tells me it should be okay to wait a couple of weeks and take him to his retina doctor on the 21st. My husband and my mother agree with me on this. Please, God, I hope I'm not wrong.