"I can't see mama!"

The eye doctor said to patch his good eye for four hours a day and handed me a single generic eye patch, telling me I could get more at the pharmacy.

I stared at it for a few minutes while he wrote in Max's chart. I knew from moms in my practice that eye patching wasn't easy. I knew from medical school that if we didn't patch Max's good eye, there was a good chance he would go blind in his bad eye.

"What do I do if he won't let me put it on?" I asked.

He said to let him get used to the glasses first, then the patch and if it wasn't working he would give us eye drops to blur his vision in his good eye.

For a moment, I actually wished that he had said surgery would help. Fleetingly, it seemed like an easier option than patching and glasses. Terrified to embark upon what sounded like a tortuous journey, I realized I needed real mommy advice. I knew what the medical advice was but I needed to know how to do this from a mommy perspective. So I read every mommy blog I could find on eye patching and we went to CVS and bought a box of patches and a bag of lollipops.

I decided I would try while he was watching Fireman Sam, his current favorite, and offered him a lollipop once we put it on. I gently coached him that we had to try the patch so he could drive a fire truck like Fireman Sam someday.

"Okay, mama," he said and leaned towards the patch. But as soon as I put it on, he screamed: "I can't see mama! I can't see!"

I stopped breathing, sure that he had already lost his sight in that eye. We were too late. I hadn't noticed soon enough. But I could hear the voices from the mommy blogs encouraging me, they all said the first few minutes were the hardest, until the eye adjusts. So I tried not to cry while we waited, I held his arms and he screamed in frantic terror, trying to rip the patch off.

Max loves being thrown up in the air and caught so I did it reflexively and then heard another voice in my head, my gynecologist who had just repaired a bladder issue that happened when Max was born. Having put the surgery off until I felt we had all Max's needs addressed, I had waited until I thought I would be able to not have to lift him for a few weeks. I was not supposed to lift more than 10 pounds. Max is 32 pounds.

"Throw me, mama. Again! Throw me!" he said as he giggled, momentarily forgetting about his patch. So I threw him, silently apologizing to my doctor in my head.

And we did that until my arms ached and he pointed to some empty hot tub chemical bottles he likes to play with, all with different colored lids.

"I play blue one, mama," he said.

"You CAN see, Max!" I said as I showered him with kisses and drizzled him with tears.