Eye Had No Idea

I've been wondering for several months if Gavin is colorblind. My dad is horribly colorblind, seeing the world in what we assume is nearly black and white. I've known since I was a little kid and studied it in school that the gene is passed through the mother and that if I ever had a son it was likely that he could be colorblind.

I've watched Gavin and his colors closely. As he began to master each color, I began noticing a reluctance to describe red and green (common colorblind challenges). A couple weeks ago he actually exclaimed excitedly, "They match!" when I showed him two very different objects in two very different colors - red and green.

I checked with our pediatrician and school district (since I was talking to them about other Gavin issues anyway) and neither had child colorblind tests. So I called my eye doctor and scheduled an appointment. Just for colorblindness.

Thank goodness I did.

Gavin shocked me by passing the tests with flying colors.

Then he sent me reeling by flunking his vision test.

I had no idea.

His left eye squeaked by with 20-80, but his right bombed with 20-400. As in, he could only see the giant E that took up the entire screen.

I had no idea.

The kid goes to football games, watches movies, reads books, beads, draws, plays with Legos and runs with abandon. How on earth has he been doing all of that with such horrible vision? How did we never notice? And how long would he had been without glasses if I hadn't been so worried about him not seeing colors?

And perhaps the worst of it, I laughed at him during the exam. While reading the eye chart, he started spouting off all kinds of made-up words and other sillies such as "crocodile". This is coming, mind you, from the same kid who last week when his pediatrician asked how he's been sleeping replied, "I lie down." He's a Peterson - with an awesome sense of humor and the smarts to never let a joke opportunity pass him by.

Only this time he wasn't kidding.

Before the news could sink in or I could recover from the guilt, we were in the store picking out indestructible, adorable wire-frame glasses.

Thankfully, one look at his little face and I felt a little better about the whole thing.