I Used to Have a Squint

by Patsy Collins

I used to have a squint. Do you know what that is? It’s where your eyeball muscles don’t work properly and make you look at your nose or the sky or something else, even when you don’t want to. It just gets like that. It’s not ‘cause a bee lands on your nose and you look at it and get stuck. Someone told me that, but they were making it up.

There are different kinds, it can be because you’ve got bad eyes and they squint when you try to see, or some people can get it if they’re ill, but that’s rare. Mine was a congenital squint, which means I grew like it. I didn’t like it much, sometimes it was difficult to tell how far away something was, or how thick it was. It was worse when I got tired, then my left eye would turn inwards. Mummy and Daddy didn’t tease me, but sometimes kids at school did. My brother Paddy made the most fuss, “You look cross-wired,” he said.

Sometimes I got a headache; it started up each time I tried to focus properly. People said my eye was lazy, so I tried really hard to make it work. It was difficult to explain that I couldn’t see things very well and that looking hard actually hurt. Because I couldn’t see well, I didn’t get on that well at school. I didn’t understand what was on the board and I couldn’t read. I did try.

I got upset and told Mummy. Although Mummy is clever, she hadn’t known how bad it was. She saw I looked odd, but as I’d nearly always been like it I think she’d got used to it. Soon as I told her about it hurting my head and not seeing the board, she booked me in for an eyesight test.

The optician told Mummy that I did have a squint and that she should take me to see my doctor. That’s what Mummy did.

The doctor said, “Don’t worry, there are things that we can do, to correct your sight. The sooner you start treatment, the quicker you’ll be right.”

My doctor said I needed to see a special eye doctor, called an orthoptist. Mummy took me to see him. He was ever so nice, even if he did have a funny name and used lots of long words. He said I had a strabismus, which is a posh word for squint. Then he said the squint had given me an amblyopia, which meant one eye had got all lazy and my brain didn’t know how to look at things properly. It all sounded scary, but the orthoptist said that as I was only just six it would all be OK.

“It’s important for treatment to begin as soon as possible,” he told Mummy. “If we start right away, your son’s sight should soon return to normal.”

Mummy was glad she’d taken me to the doctors. I got some glasses and Mummy said they made me look brainy. I didn’t think they did. I liked it when I got a patch. That went on my good eye, so the other one had to look the right way. It made me look like a pirate, which is loads better than looking brainy.

Quite soon, I could see much better. Turned out I really am brainy. I’m top of all the classes, my brother Paddy calls me a swat. You can’t win with brothers. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is, if you’ve got a squint, or even if you just think you might have, you should go to your doctors. They’ll give you tests and stuff and then fix your eyes. It might be easy like it was for me, or you might have an operation if the eye needs straightening out. It’ll be all right though. You can trust me, ‘cause like I said, I’m brainy. (Not as brainy as Mummy though, she helped me with spelling all the long words and doing the typing.)