Intermittent Exotropia

Aug 1, 2016
3 min read

Well, here I finally am! It's my second semester at ACHS and I had been talking about starting a blog since before I started classes..talk about procrastinator!

Anyway tonight I wanted to talk about a little disorder known as Intermittent Exotropia. Don't worry, I had never heard of it either, that is until my then 7 month old was diagnosed with it. Stabismis.org defines it as such: 'Exotropia -- a common type of strabismus -- is the outward deviation of an eye (eye turns away from the nose). When the eye turns outward only some of the time, it is called intermittent exotropia.' In my sons case his eye would often go out when he was tired or if we were outside on a sunny day or a white winter day. At the initial exam we were informed that although the specialist had never seen it in someone so young, his actual eyesight had seemed to be very good for a boy of his age. We were informed that treatments including patching and most likely surgery if he doesn't begin to grow out of it.

Here you can see his eye floating outward

Call me crazy, but I really didn't like the idea of surgery. A) This doctor hadn't seen it in someone so young, so he's never done surgery on someone so young B) He was just getting some good gut flora built up after being delivered via C-section and I really didn't want to load him up on antibiotics and C) We were told he wouldn't be able to nurse/eat from midnight till after surgery the next day (which seems impossible for this child who nurses all day and night!). So I began researching and found very little on the issue. No one talks about it and if so surgery is the only option I could find- that is until I brought it up with our chiropractor.

I highly suggest you find a Gonstead certified chiropractor in your area..it has been life changing having ours as a resource (You can look here: www.gonstead.com/find-a-gonstead-doctor/ ). Anyway, our son had been going to her since he was about 2 months old for spitting up issues- this child would spit up insane amounts at any given time. Within about 6 adjustments he had hardly spit up at all. Although he was too young to sit still for an x-ray, she was able to see his neck was bad from scanning it. Turns out the weak muscles in his eye is simply being caused by a pinched nerve. He was getting regular weekly adjustments until about 2 months ago and now it's simply on an as needed basis. Little side note-this boy is crazy, he is the ultimate captain of chaos and will gladly crash into anything he can. So needless to say, his neck and back go out quite often and its pretty amazing to see when it does how his right eye will start to drift and within a day or two after adjustment its as if he never had the problem. The picture above is before his last adjustment. We know the problems not 'cured', his muscles are still weaker in that area for what ever reason, but hopefully over time they will become stronger.

Now the fun part began, I decided to follow up with the pediatric specialist mostly just for input. I had brought my mom with me for backup as he had been very cold and stand offish in the past. I asked about nutrition and vitamins, which he quickly informed me that they have NOTHING to do with his eye, which seems odd to me as your cells are essentially made up of everything you consume. I then told him about our chiropractor journey and he quickly shut that down as well. He tried to convince that he was beginning to grow out of it, if it is in fact getting better. I, personally, wasn't satisfied with this. I tried to get a second opinion through their office and ended up dealing with the patient coordinator, who quickly informed me that this doctor must not of understood my questions and that diet and chiropractic care aren't FDA approved so they won't be considered by their office. I was perplexed! Luckily my mom works at a medical office and informed me if I want to get any where I need to talk to the office manager, who turns out to be AMAZING at the eye clinic. Within a day she got me a referral to an office a couple hours from here. Were patiently waiting that appointment and I'll update from there-here's to hoping that this doctor will be a little more open minded!

Sources:

Cooper, D. J., & Cooper, R. What is strabismus. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.strabismus.com/intermittent_exotropia.html