Second opinion

Several months ago I started to have the feeling that I should seek a second opinion about Lila's eyes. I kept pushing it out of my head thinking what else could they tell me? She had/has cataracts and needs contacts what could be so different? It took a conversation with my old (beloved) vision therapist to make the call.
I called the apparently "guy to see" in Utah and made an appointment. It took several months to get into him, we saw him the beginning of May. He looked at Lila and immediately asked if she had officially been diagnosed with Aicardi syndrome. My heart sank. I found this syndrome when I was googeling and it's not a good one. I said she hadn't, he seemed skeptical. He looked at the past doctors notes and finally told me that he didn't agree with his colleague and thought Lila was wearing the wrong prescription in her contacts. For the past ten months!!!! He said he wanted to put her under anesthesia and do an exam himself, he wanted to measure her eyes, check the powers of her prescription, do an VEP (visually evoked potential) do some photography of her retinas, optic nerves, etc. I was nervous yet thrilled that we were revisiting the problem. (Our last Doctor had said he had done all he could and just check in from time to time)
We started to set up the appointment, they said the soonest was two months away. That was pretty sickening to me. I was a bit panicked to get it done since she had already had the wrong prescription for so long. I called relentlessly. I feel very bad for the people at the Moran Eye center. In the end we scheduled it for today. Just six weeks from the time I was told she had the wrong prescription.
I was just sick all week. This was the same procedure that was the beginning of all of Lila's health issues. The last Doc had done these same tests and concluded that he wouldn't do surgery because frankly the brain was not functioning enough to do so. Only the MRI, which showed her brain was intact changed his mind. Suffice to say I was very scared that today would be another tearful and tragic experience.
Here is what we learned. Lila does have small and pale optic nerves but her VEP, or all the info going from the eyes to the brain is in the NORMAL range! Low on the scale, but on the normal scale none the less! She does NOT have retinal lucunea, the tell-tale sign of Aicardi syndrome. She is near sighted but as of right now she is not going to wear her right contact lens. We have an appointment with another doctor to fit her with new contacts based on what the measurements found today. Dr. "H" says that he has every reason to hope for her future vision wise. We will see him regularly and start patching her eyes in the hopes of strengthening them.
It was kinda funny when the Doc was telling us the good news Quinn let him know that he and his dad owned an optical clinic (so they could talk in medical terms and Quinn would understand) , the doc looked at our name tags and said "oh you are those Kimball's! Kinda a big name around these parts for optometry." I'm starting to think Lila didn't come to us by accident. How blessed we feel that she has all the support and all the opportunities to reach her full potential.
Tears today, but definitely tears of joy. We feel so blessed to have this good news.