When Theo was young, he hit his head while we were visiting with family. “It’s okay” he told his uncle, “My nickname is headfirst”. Nobody had ever called Theo that before, but the name sure fit. Theo always managed to hit his head on things. Open cabinets and doors, chairs sticking out from the table, and ledges. Once when we were on vacation, Theo tripped on his own feet and went sprawling on the hard tile floor in the middle of the hotel. I wish I could describe the loud smack sound, or the gasps from the surrounding people as it echoed. Luckily he got up a suffered nothing more than a large goose egg bruise. It was really distressing for us to watch him get hurt over and over again.
We had always assumed that Theo was just unlucky or uncoordinated but as he got older we noticed a lot of difficulties in his learning at school. We decided to look further into what might be going on. After doing a private assessment we started learning some of the difficulties he was facing. Still it wasn’t all adding up. We spoke with a friend in the eyecare field who told us about eye therapy. We went to do an assessment with the Eye Studio in Red Deer to see what they thought. It turns out, he had significant problems with his eyes. The biggest issue being that his eyes only coordinated with each other 25% of the time. This meant he couldn’t see the world in 3 dimensions. This seemed impossible to us. Our little man was navigating our world in only 2 dimensions. He had to work extremely hard to do simple things like walk down stairs, put his pencil to the paper to write, and navigate his surroundings. He has always been easily exhausted and we thought maybe it was low iron or just how his body was built but nope, it was the struggle he faced. His body had to, somehow, figure out how to operate in a world without a key part. His eyes worked so hard every day that it exhausted him. We can’t even comprehend not seeing the world in 3D or how his body was able to function.
Suddenly it all made sense, and it wasn’t just that his head collided with surfaces so easily. This diagnosis walked into things or couldn’t find his shoes that were directly below him. It explained why he always put his head sideways on the table when he was drawing or writing, why he closes one eye when focusing, why he struggled significantly with spelling or wrote his letters backwards and upside down. It explained why he could spell words or do math equations out loud, but couldn’t do it on paper. It took him at least twice as long to figure things out as he was trying to solve both the problems, make his pencil touch the paper and remember how the letters looked and to move his pencil.
With the official diagnosis, Theo was recommended to take eye therapy in Red Deer. This was a lot to take in. We tried to comprehend how he saw the world, tried to understand the complications the doctor said he was having and figure out how to get him to eye therapy in Red Deer once a week. The unpaid time off work and gas money to and from each week was hard but doable. However, the cost of the therapy was shocking. We balked at the price and wondered how we were going to manage. Luckily for us, Mountainview Hope society came through and offered their support. It relieved a lot of financial stress from the situation and let us just focus on helping our little guy. Eye therapy was been very exhausting for Theo. He has to do exercises twice a day and it’s quite hard on his eyes and body as a whole. It’s a struggle for us to fit in the process into our daily lives and have him not fight against it. We have now completed a whole year and are so proud of Theo and all his hard work. We’ve seen Theo make leaps and bounds in his learning, and his head isn’t the easy target that it used to be. His spelling, writing and math skills have improved and he is not as exhausted as he used to be at the end of each day. He has way better coordination and is even playing hockey. We are so grateful for all the people that helped us through this journey. We are especially thankful for Hope for Mountain View Kids for easing the financial struggle we were facing. Thank you so much for your support. We are so grateful for the financial support you gave us. Theo’s world has been changed and we look forward to continuing to see his progress in the next 6-12 months of Therapy.