some might recall that six months ago after odin’s last follow-up exam to keep track of any lingering effects from his retinopathy of prematurity that we discovered that he had started to show signs of nearsightedness.

and six months later it appears that his vision has continued to degrade and while he certainly still has sight, it’s now entirely possible that he could be categorized as legally blind in both eyes with a prescription strength of -5.0 ( i can’t remember exactly what visual acuity value that prescription corresponds to, but i believe it’s worse than 20/200 – maybe somebody can correct me on that ).

as you can see, it’s getting more and more difficult to accurately measure his vision since he’s much more vocal about his displeasure with the dilation drops and bright lights being shone in his eyes so it’s possibly that his vision isn’t quite as bad as we might believe but at this point we’re just going to assume that he’ll require some form of corrective measures much sooner than later.

more positively his peripheral vision is “good” which is encouraging since it’s not uncommon to completely lose the capability as a consequence of ROP induced damage to the retina and from the ROP surgery itself. and his retina also appears to be “on center” and not gradually being pulled to the side due to a complicated effect from the ROP scar tissue and the developing eye. if it were to begin being pulled off center odin might have to learn to live with people constantly wondering why he wasn’t looking at them when they were talking, even though he was, in fact, looking right them.

i know some people were really hoping that odin’s eyes would just get better, but we’ve been aware that this was a possible outcome and i’m sure odin will overcome whatever challenges result from his changing eyesight, even if it gets much worse which is more likely than not.