I took Danny for his check-up with the ophthalmologist yesterday afternoon. It was a long day with lots of driving. Thursday is not my favourite day. I have crammed it insanely full with the kids' activities so as to have Monday and Wednesday totally free.

7.15 am: Drop Robyn at school, leave Kloof. Discover that parts of Lady Chatterly's Lover are quite erotic.
8:05 am: Arrive Umhlanga (little flushed).
12:05pm: Leave Umhlanga. Drive slower than usual but not quite slowly enough to finish part 1 of chapter 10 (damn).
12:35pm: Arrive Kloof, fetch Lauren from school, pick up forgotten change of clothes for girls and sandwiches from home, fetch Daniel and vegetable man from school.
12:50pm: Leave Kloof. Kids cannibalise vegetable man. Have bite of vegetable man. Squirt tomato juice all down white shirt. To self, curse white shirt, tomato and vegetable man.
12:58pm: Arrive Pinetown. Watch Lauren's swimming. Eat sandwiches with Daniel. Feel smug child is happily munching healthy brown bread marmite sandwich instead of packet of chips as per last week.
1:35pm: Leave Pinetown.
1:50pm: Arrive Kloof. Pick up unhealthy packet of chips for Robyn from garage shop due to insufficient quantity of healthy brown bread marmite sandwiches.
1:54pm: Arrive Robyn's school. Yell at Robyn for dawdling.
1:58pm: Leave Kloof.
2:02pm: Arrive Pinetown. Watch girls' gym, chat to other moms including friend and someone who teaches. Yearn to be teacher. Daniel asleep on gym mat.
3:15pm: Drive Daniel to doctor. (Girls leave gym with friend.) Daniel grumpy.
3:30pm: See doctor.
3:43pm: Receive concerned phone call from cleaning lady enquiring as to whereabouts of daily busfare.
To self, curse fact that cleaning lady insists on daily busfare instead of monthly busfare lump sum.
3:48pm: Leave Pinetown.
3:53pm: Arrive Kloof. Drive cleaning lady to bus stop to alleviate guilt.
4:02pm: Arrive friend's house (where girls are). Collapse on couch for cup of tea. Desire whisky.
5:15pm: Return home.
6:20pm: Miraculously, greet Peter reasonably cheerfully at door with supper cooked, homework done and full complement of three bathed children.

The doctor's visit itself was pretty uneventful. Since the middle of the year we've not been required to go more often than every 2 months. The vision in both eyes seems to be working well. There is still a very slight squint for near vision but for distance he seems to be straight. We actually managed to do a somewhat formal vision test on Daniel which the doctor was quite surprised by as he didn't think a child Daniel's age could identify shapes reliably. (The test was done similarly to a test you would do with an adult except that smaller and smaller shapes are shown rather than letters.) We tried last time as well but at that stage Daniel was identifying everything as either 'circle' or 'shape'.

The squint is almost impossible to detect now, and the doctor doesn't think he can reliably get him straighter with another operation. (Might for example over-correct it.) Daniel still closes one eye in bright light, and it's not really clear why he's doing that, as apparently physiologically he could not have double vision at his age. Double vision will only occur if something happens to cause a squint at the age of about 9 or over - in Daniel's case, instead his brain is only using the image from one eye or the other at any one time. I asked him whether double vision would develop as he got older. Apparently not - his brain will continue to operate the way it's used to.

I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but the down side is that he probably will not have proper binocular vision so some professions such as microsurgery will not be possible. This is due to the fact that his eyes have not been working together for a significant portion of his early childhood. Children with squints from birth have no chance of having binocular vision even when their squints are corrected. In his case, with a squint from 9 months, he might have binicular vision, but probably won't. He might have it to some degree or not at all. This should not affect him much in day to day life, for example, in catching a cricket ball. Apparently 1 to 2 % of the population have this condition. When he is older he will be able to be tested for it. The important thing at this stage is to keep checking that the vision is not deteriorating in either eye as it is important to have two good eyes rather than one. A spare, so to speak.