My daughter Mackenzie was diagnosed with severe amblyopia when she was 3 years old.  We had no idea that she was not seeing well with her left eye.  We began patching her every day, all day long.  Not surprisingly, patching compliance was the source of many battles.  She would fight and cry, but after six months her vision was greatly improved.  Patching was working, but the trick was to make it easier for Mackenzie.  I created a cloth patch that fits over Mackenzie's glasses, and we decorated the patches to look like animal characters.  Mackenzie loved her new patches.  In the mornings, the discussions revolved around which patch to wear instead of "Why do I have to wear a patch?"  This gave Mackenzie some control in the situation.  Her friends at school loved them so much that they wanted one too.  This made Mackenzie feel special instead of embarrassed.  We showed our ophthalmogist and he wanted me to sell them at his eye center.  I now sell the patches all over the country to doctors and parents wanting to make the patching process easier and more comfortable.

Mackenzie ended up patching for 5 years. She started at 3 1/2 years old patching all day every day. We tried Atropine drops but we were worried that we may be damaging her good eye, since her eye stayed dilated for 10 days after we stopped giving the drops to her. At age 6, she started maintence patching because we were able to improve her 20/400 vision to 20/30. She slowly decreased the amount of patching she did everyday until age 8 when she patched for only 1 hour per day. It was a long journey for Mackenzie and her whole family but she has good vision in her eye and no longer needs a patch.

She is 12 years old in this picture wearing contacts. Mackenzie is active in sports, dance and musical groups. She has long forgotten all the struggles we had over patching. On the day she received her contacts she turned to me with a big smile and thanked me for making her patch. She felt so beautiful and grown up. To tell you the truth, it was hard for me to let go of the cute little girl with glasses and a patch.