...And the optic nerve too

I just wanted to add a little bit to Paul's post about the great news about Maggie's vision...and why it really is really great news.

Months ago, when Maggie was still in the hospital, the early eye examinations revealed that although the structure of her eye was fine - that she could probably technically see - the optic nerve connecting her eye to her brain was pale. This can happen in cases of prematurity, but it also occurs in cases of brain damage - and given that Maggie wasn't yet fixing or following on any objects, including us, we were kind of warned that the latter could be the case. And what would that mean? That the worst case scenario was that Maggie would 'see' things but she wouldn't understand what they were, she wouldn't remember them, she wouldn't be able to make any sense of them. So there really wouldn't be much point of seeing anyway. And it used to break my heart time and time again in the hospital to think that she was looking at me, seeing me, only to move my head out of her line of sight and she would just continue looking in the exact way. Would I have a little baby that didn't know from just looking at me that I was her mum?

Needless to say, I've been worried about those optic nerves and what they meant for a long time. At the appointment last week the consultant said that he wasn't even going to put Maggie through the eye drops and tests because he felt confident just seeing her look around the room at all the different people and all their different movements and their tester toys that she knew what she was seeing, that she was definitely taking it all in.

Of course they had to add in that her understanding could be delayed, slower, what have you but really, yet again, it's just about Maggie being so much better than they thought she would be nine months ago, five months ago, three months ago. She's a bloody superstar - who now smiles right at us.