I have had amblyopia all of my life. I was born with it but my parents didn't take me to the doctor for it until after i hit my head in kindergarten and suddenly my eye was worse. I had to use a patch when I was little. i hated it. I would get the most aweful headaches from it. I got glasses in 3rd grade. My eye doctor used to push my parents to do a surgery to straighten it quicker so i wouldn't lose my vision in that eye. We were poor and the surgery was really expensive. I never had it done. I stopped wearing my glasses for a long time because people made fun of me because one lens was so much thicker then the other. When I got my first job, I was a cashier and I had at least one customer a day ask me if i was looking at them or someone else. I nearly quit my job. I went back to the eye doctor when I was like 16 and paid for glasses on my own (long story. my parents were alcoholics and my mom a drug addict). My eye eventually straightened out with glasses by the time i was 19 and now it isn't turned in at all. I am almost legally blind in that eye. I can "see" out of it if I close my right eye but as my eye doctor has told me, my brain has shut off the use of that eye. I was diagnosed with an astigmatism in my right eye about 3 or 4 years ago so I have no choice but to wear glasses 80% of the time. I have 2 children and I am so so so thankful neither of them has developed lazy eye!! Life is hard enough for kids in elementary school! I remember days I would cry walking home from the bus or crying myself to sleep because i didn't want to go to school and be picked on.
