Betty Davis Eyes

Maybe with some effort I could renew this old page. I pretty much stopped writing because I seemed to always be down on life. But regardless what life deals us we go on. So since my life revolves around my family I will chat about that and occasionally I will vent, hopefully not to often.

You know the old song "She's Got Betty Davis Eyes"? It was a song about a woman with a lovely set of peepers. Like the renowned eyes of actress Betty Davis. Well into her 80's at least now her eyes are about all that is still lovely but she is still a beauty. This week was trips to the doctors for two of the girls. Fatimah has now had Type 1 Diabetes for 7 years and was due for an eye exam. And Aieysha was scheduled for a dental to check progress on her braces.

Fatimah got very sick around her second birthday, at the time she was the third youngest in the USA. Also for some unknown reason children born in 1999 were coming up diabetic. Don't know why never looked into it much back then. Fatimah was born on 090999. She had just barely recovered and made it to two when a few days later a more famous day is known 9-11.

Well, this month she is 10 years old. She is my baby and its odd to know that my granddaughter Keeley just had her tenth birthday on the first. For anyone from Libya this is a day of pride. September 1 is the day Qhadaffi came into power. I got the letter from the Embassy warning us Americans to be careful during that time. I was in Libya that time, four years ago when I last was in Libya. I remember going to the capital city and seeing all the lights and decorations set to celebrate the day. And that evening I stayed at home with my brother in law Salem and could here the celebrations around the city.

Well, this year is much different, I'm in the USA and far from the sights and sounds of Tripoli. We are working on our third week of school and the kids are doing great. So, Monday I took Fatimah to her diabetes exam and for once in a very long time her Hb1C was 8.9. To those of you who suffer with diabetes you know that is the level of overall sugar in your system. A score under 7 is the best. But it has always been a struggle for us to keep her scores low. I hoped that with her getting older she would begin to understand more of not having so much of something or not asking for more when she eats less than a hour before but her little body goes into hunger pangs when her levels go up and she eats like there is no tomorrow. She has yet to understand that is a trigger that she needs to ignore. Her body is needing to burn the sugars in her system not add more to it. So things such as loss of eye sight over her lifetime will be reduced. They said that even people with good testing still can loose eyesight but I would love for it not to happen too soon. There is too much too see that she hasn't.

Well, we got a appointment for the next morning so I had two at the same time. I asked hubby to take Aieysha and I would go with Fatimah since they were only a few buildings apart. We got in and as usual my daughter was a social butterfly talking up a storm with the nurse. She was a bit scared when I told her what the doctor was going to do but she was a trouper. Her eyes were first looked at with various scopes and the nurse finally administered her drops to dilate her retina. Then she said it would be 15 minutes. A fine young doctor entered the room and had a wonderful bedside manner and she had a new buddy. He then was great at explaining what he was doing. The doctor used a variety of scopes to again look into her eyes. On on occasion she peeped, "I can see the back of my eyes!" He told us so many technical terms that I finally asked how to spell that one so we could share it with her siblings. ENTOPTIC Phenomena. When a strong light is shined into the back of your eye you get a refraction onto the lens and it is transferred back so you see a floating light. Next, he took a few photographs of her eyes to examine for damage to the blood vessels of her eyes. This damage is what results in lost of eyesight for diabetics. The tiny veins begin to deteriorate and the veins burst and eventually the eyes loose blood supply and they die. We looked in wonder at her eyes and commented on what they looked like. Chicken yolks came to mind, planets in space and plain old yuck was her opinion. But they were still strong that was all that mattered. Now each year she will be given an eye exam and if and when she starts having eye trouble we have a reference point to refer to for damage. In the photo above the dark spot is the eyes optic nerve that goes to our brain. The spider veins supply blood and oxygen to the eyes. The other light spot is the eye seeing light from the source. I was so thrilled I asked the doctor if he could email it to me to show the other kids. He took my email address and said he would try to.

Well, we gathered up our belongings and headed out the door and Fatimah, donned in her space glasses entered the bright sunlight and yelled. "its too bright!" Yes, hunny be thankful you can see this glorious day. Somewhere out there is someone who can't or doesn't want to see the wonder of this day. So to all of you- Look for your sunshine day and remember it when the world seems dark.