eye follow-up

Hooray!

Thanks so much for your prayers for Ibra's eyes. This week's doctor appointment went really well. The new steroids that he's been taking are reducing the bumps in his eyes - even THE BUMP! When the doctor saw how his eyes responded, he said, "Oh good. That means that we know what this is."

Since his eyes responded to the steroid, the doctors agreed that Ibra has something called vernal limbal, which is an allergic eye disease. "Disease" sounds dramatic, so while it can have serious complications if untreated, think of it more as an inflammatory allergy. His eyes are over-reactive to things like sun, dust, wind, heat, etc and those can cause his eyes to get red and itchy (among other things). It usually appears in children around 8 or 9 years of age, and at age 4, Ibra is the youngest person that the doctor has seen with this in his 40 years of practice. We're not sure if this is something he'll grow out of (keep praying!), but we're definitely thankful that...

a) it's diagnosed
b) it's responding to the new steroid
c) we can get him off of the steroid and on to other daily drops soon
d) his eyes aren't bothering him so much
e) our son has clearer eyes than we've seen since we've been a family
f) we don't have to go back to the eye doctor for 4 weeks  :)

We really appreciate your continued prayers for Ibra's eyes and are glad to share the good news with you.