I See What You Did There

 Youngest struggles.

There's really  no way around it. He has some definite challenges that we're working on unraveling - and some days it's more than I think we're going to be able to handle.

One of the big issues continues to be his eyes.

When he was 4? 5? The eye doctor prescribed a crazy strong correction that we worked with for a year, only to realize that haha just kidding, he didn't need it. He was struggling to track as he read across the line at the doctor and so it wasn't that he couldn't see the letter, he just didn't know which one he was supposed to read.

So we started vision therapy a little over a year ago.

There have been some improvements. It's hard to know which are because we're also doing medication for his ADHD (and so he can focus well enough to follow a line of text to the end) or because now his eyes can track well enough.

It's probably some of both.

Regardless, we met with the doctor at VT on Monday for one of the little evaluation check ins and...where we should have probably been finishing up, we're now signed on for at least one more 12 week unit. Whee.

And I mentioned that the eye doctor in June had noticed that he felt youngest could do with a stronger prescription. So this doctor check and agreed that yes. He needs stronger glasses.

Also bifocals.

At eight.

I mean I get that it's a thing - his eyes are just bad. But I'm terrified that we're going to find it's another situation where something OTHER than his eyes caused him to test as needing these prescriptions and we'll waste time and money and heartache learning to use them.

Or maybe they'll be the last piece of the puzzle to unlock. That's the optimistic viewpoint, so not one I gravitate to naturally, but Tim's banking on that.

Anyway. Today I took the prescription over to our eye doctor to get filled. And while I love our eye doctor, I despise, with one exception, his front office staff. I was hoping that, Covid, you know, we could make an appointment to come choose frames. Nope. You just have to show up and wait outside until such time as the people with appointments are done and the occupancy is low enough that they'll let you in.

Okay, fine. We go. We wait. We see no fewer than eight people get let in. We play seven rounds of two-person matching on the Cracker Barrel app (and I kicked butt - neither of the boys has a methodology for matching. I don't get it. They just poke randomly. Whatever. I like winning.) and finally I called to say, as politely as possible, WTF.

So then one of the ladies is like "The other doctor didn't send this to your insurance saying that you needed it approved."

And I'm like, "Uh. We've never had to have glasses preapproved."

Then another lady comes out and explains (slightly better) that the insurance computer is down, but why don't we come in and she'll give them a call? 

Then the one lady who I like comes over and is like "No, these are their benefits, here's how much everything costs, yes it's fine, just get them glasses." And this is why I love her because she knows her job and is content to just do it.

Anyway, after a ridiculous comedy of errors, we choose frames, get all his measurements taken, and lo and behold, they'll only be $150, which really is about half (to a third) of what I expected them to be so at least if they end up being a colossal waste of time at least we wont' have broken the bank on them.

I just hope they work. Because this kid needs something to go right for him. And so does his mama.