One of my twin girls has Amblyopia or “Lazy Eye” as it is called in lay terms. The Lion’s Club noticed the condition during a routine screening at her daycare when she was four years old. We were told we really needed to take her for a full eye exam.

So we did.

Now my twin girls are admittedly shy. They did not talk easily to adults at that age. We took her to my ophthalmologist from when I was a kid and whom I had seen to that day. He found nothing wrong with her vision, but he had a hard time getting her to respond to him. His “diagnosis” was that they simply had not been able to get her to communicate and they simply referred her on the basis of a lack of response.

Thankfully, a year later, the Lion’s Club did another screening. This time they had the folks call from Vanderbilt’s Children’s Eye Clinic, and they explained the problem and the seriousness of it going untreated. They explained the seriousness of losing time treating it, and how it was imperative that it not wait a moment longer than absolutely necessary.

We made an appointment.

The doctor had her prescription figured out within a minute or two. I was amazed. How did she do it so quickly? The doc simply shined a light in her eyes and could tell the approximate prescription from the way the light refracted off the back of her eye.

Excuse me?

I lost nearly a year of time in treating this disease with which time is of the essence. And I lost it because my doc did not know to refract a light off the back of the eye? It makes me angry even as I write this.

We do not see that first doc any more.

Today, after patching and glasses in an unrelenting regimen, she sees quite well. Her vision with corrective lenses is better than they had hoped it would ever be. In fact, she approaches near 20/20 vision. That’s fortunate considering had I not gotten to a better doc, she might today be legally blind in that eye.