When will it end?

We have known since Austin was about 3 that he had symptoms of lazy eye. It is most noticable when he is tired so most people don't notice it. Right now, his right eye is legally blind. What happens is that when he was born with lazy eye his brain saw two images (one from the right and one from the left eye). To make sense of this the brain shuts off one of the eyes so that it is only recieving one image. Since there is blindness and retinal disease on my husbands side of the family I have been watching it pretty close. Beyond patching his eye our local optometrist didn't seem to know much. So, we brought him to SLC to see my sister-in-law's (who has retinal disease) specialist who referred us to a pediatric opthamologist in Primary Childrens Hospital. He, again, had us patch Austin's good eye to try and make the bad eye work. We patched it four hours a day. We went back 6 weeks later to see if it had done any good which it didn't. The doctor said that means he either has retinal disease or we aren't patching his eye correctly (we aren't pacting long enough, he is peeking around the patch too often, etc.). He can see part of the retina which he says doesn't look like he has retinal disease but he won't know for sure unless he goes in surgically. If he does have retinal disease than we could patch his eye all the time and it wouldn't do any good. Since Austin will already be under anthesia for the exploratory surgery the Dr. thinks we should correct his lazy eye at the same time. After surgery, if he doesn't have retinal disease and if we caught it early enough his brain will hopefully notice that his bad eye is look forward and begin to start working with his other eye. Even though it makes my stomach turn to think about his eye being cut open, I know that it is the right thing to do. Luckily we were just approved for Medicaid so hopefully that will help us pay for it since our primary insurance will only pay 50%.

Spencer came home from the school the other night and I thought he was having an anxiety attack. He was pacing around, couldn't sit still, kept forgetting what he was doing or saying. It was a little scary. He went into the Councelors Center on campus and was diagnosed with ADD. He has had symptoms of it for a long time so we weren't suprised. I joked with him and told him that I knew there was something wrong with him. He responded saying that is just what he needed to hear from his wife. He started taking medication for it yesterday which is a generic form of Ritalin. He has already noticed a difference. He took a couple of tests yesterday where he said normally he would have gotten frusterated and gave up, but he was able to remain focused and finish every problem. It took him longer to take his Calculus test and he wasn't able to finish he Physics test before the Testing Center closed. His teacher said that he will let him finish, but will take some points off for it being late. That is better than nothing. Right?!

These things often happen in threes so I'm waiting for the 3rd one to hit.