Crosseyed and painless

It's been very interesting for me to read about Anna Nicole Smith's daughter Dannielynn being diagnosed with strabismus. I'd actually been wondering about that, because in literally every photo I saw of her, her eyes didn't look right. I was really hoping that despite all the turmoil over her mother's troubled life and death and her paternity testing and so on, that someone would take a good look at this little girl and make sure she didn't have one more thing in her life to be self-conscious about. I commend her father for getting her the professional medical attention she needs, and for making clear that this in all likelihood is genetic and has nothing to do with her mom's drug use, etc. Strabismus is a fairly common condition, but it gets zero media attention. While I'm sorry Dannielynn has to go through this, I'm glad her family has taken the opportunity to educate the masses about her condition.

I was born with strabismus. My daughter developed it around 14 months. My mom recently discovered old photos of her great-grandfather and it looks like he had it too, although in the 1870s, there wasn't anything you could do about it. I've had 3 surgeries to realign my eyes, and Melrose just had her second. The technology for operating on eyes has improved vastly since my last surgery in 1992--while it used to mean a few nights in the hospital, nowadays it's an outpatient procedure. Even in the old days, the most traumatic thing about it was the anesthesia. People cringe when they hear about eye surgery, but I can assure Larry Birkhead and anyone else wondering that it's not painful. There's some discomfort the first couple of days, and you don't look too appetizing, but eyes heal quickly. Getting over the anesthesia is way worse than the trauma to your eye.

My hope for Melrose and Dannielynn is that they can gain some binocularity, or that at the very least their eyes can be aligned well enough to look straight and "pass" for normal. While there are much worse medical conditions out there than being crosseyed or walleyed, socially it can be very stigmatizing. You never look good in photos and you worry endlessly that people will notice your eyes are going two different ways. And athletically, you can pretty much forget being good at any sport involving flying objects. You can probably hit the baseball, but catching one is tricky. I didn't realize my depth perception was off until I was 16 and taking my driver's test, but you do learn to compensate in situations like driving. Melrose's doctor reiterated that she may never become a surgeon, a pro soccer player, or a military pilot, but it won't stop her from anything else. As a kid, I was always sort of annoyed that I couldn't see 3-D images or play tennis, but being called "Crosseyed Katie" caused way more grief than the few things I couldn't do.

When Melrose was diagnosed and we had to get her glasses due to overall farsightedness, I felt guilty and angry, even though I'd been a very conscientious pregnant mom. I didn't want my child to look funny or different from everyone else, or have to go through all the extra aggravation of patching and doctors' visits and surgery. Getting a 16-month-old to wear glasses full-time was a long and expensive battle. At the same time, there are so many worse things she could have. I'll take a couple of surgeries and distorted depth perception over daily insulin shots, or life-threatening allergies, or a progressive and fatal disease. I just want people to understand that strabismus doesn't make you blind or stupid; you just see the world a little differently than most people. And there are a few odd advantages...I will say that needing to buy contacts for only one eye is a huge bonus!

On a lighter note, we watched The Amazing Race finale last night. It wasn't very exciting, mostly because, like this person, I would have been happy with pretty much any of the winners. The grandpa-grandson team was my favorite from the beginning; the Type A dad-daughter team really grew on me; and the winning team didn't annoy me too much other than their persistent nutty-crunchy aura. There wasn't anyone I was really worried would win, since whiny Nate and Jen got eliminated last week. All in all, a decent season.