A Painted Eye

A lot has changed in just over a year for us. We found out that Jasper was born blind in his right eye only a month after his birth, and from there went on a whirlwind adventure to figure out what this would mean for him and how to best support his growth.

We have graduated now to his very first “painted” eye. This process happened sooner than we thought that it would, but it has been so fun to see how a painted prosthetic works.

He had 3 clear conformers up to this point, increasing in size every few months. This allowed his eye socket and surrounding tissues to grow and match his good eye. (You can see only two in this photo because we lost his most recent one at daycare! A downside to them being clear…)

First, we have to wash his prosthetic with water and soap and put Systane eye drops on it to lubricate it. We then use a little suction cup to insert the prosthetics under his eyelids but over his smaller blind eye. The red dot shows us which direction to insert it, the red dot should be in his upper left part of his eye. He doesn’t love this process but we have gotten very quick at it and he doesn’t mind the prosthetic once it is inserted. He can wear if for about 12 hours before it starts to bother him. We will continue to work up to him wearing a prosthetic eye full time. As he grows, we will mail his painted eye back to our prosthetics team at Maloney’s Ocular Prosthetics, and they will add material onto the outside of his prosthetic so it will continue to fit and help expand his eye socket. We will need another painted eye in about a year or so.

Here is a screen shot from a video Travis took of Michael from Maloney’s painting his new eye. I didn’t get to go this time around, so I am really looking forward to taking him next time to see this process in person.