Anna Nicole Smith’s one year old daughter is cross-eyed, her father Larry Birkhead tells the press. Dannielynn, who has recently been rumored to be sporting an eyepatch, suffers from an eye condition known as strabismus. The eyepatch is used to cover the strong eye in an effort to strengthen the weak one, but Dannielynn may have to undergo surgery.“She has strabismus, which is a turning in of one of her eyes, and it’s something that we’ve been looking out for for a while,” Larry tells ET’s Mark Steines. “I’ve been taking her to the doctors and Anna had taken Dannielynn to the doctor [in the Bahamas] to see about it when she was just a few months old. I got her a little pirate doll to show her that people wear patches, and it’s okay, and daddy wears a patch if he has to to show her it’s okay. I’ve been really aggressive with the patch as much as I can be. At first she was really open to it and it didn’t really bother her. Now, she’s gotten a little smart because she can pull it off, so it’s a little bit harder for me to patch her. I’m going to do everything to make sure that it’s corrected, but having lost Anna and [her son] Daniel and my dad — my dad just came out of a simple surgery and he died — it’s just tough for me to think about surgeries with [Dannielynn].” And Larry staunchly defends any suggestion in the tabloids and on Web blogs that Dannielynn’s condition has anything to do with methadone or any medications Anna may have taken during her pregnancy. “All of the opinions that I had [from doctors], every one of them said that it’s very, very unlikely, because no one knows one-hundred percent what causes [strabismus],” says Larry. “But I point-blank ask every single doctor, ‘Could any medications that Anna was on have caused this?’ and they said that it’s more likely that a genetic reason could have caused it.”
[Source: ET]
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3 Responses
I just heard about Dannielyn’s Strabismus and can relate to what Larry is going through. My son had to wear an eye patch when he was 2 years old for a Lazy Eye. I made a DVD for him called “The Eye Patch Kids” that has been helping him and thousands of other kids deal with this. Prevent Blindness America lists the DVD as a useful resource for patching children with Amblyopia or Strabismus. You can go to my website at http://www.bjortandcompany.com to find the DVD.
Kelly H.
Bjort & Company, Inc.
http://www.bjortandcompany.com
Dannielynn has amblyopia, doesn’t she? why didn’t she have esotropia surgery when she was an infant to treat this?
CindyLouWho (right?) – If Dannielynn has Amblyopia (”Lazy Eye”), she obviously wouldn’t undergo Esotropia surgery to correct it. Esotropia (a type of Strabismus) surgery is done if the problem has been determined to be Strabismus/Esotropia. Children with Esotropia may (secondarily) develop Amblyopia though, but Amblyopia in itself is not treated with surgery AFAIK. An article at Wikipedia says about surgery for [Congenital] Esotropia that there is debate re. treatment, some favour early surgery whilst others don’t think the chances of excellent results are good enough to justify the increased complexity and risk associated with surgery on infants (read Esotropia article for details).
If her diagnosis is Amblyopia, maybe her dad simply has been recommended to try patch treatment first, to see if surgery can be avoided? I seem to remember though that he said in an interview she has strabismus. I think he also mentioned being worried about surgery and possible surgery complications (since he lost his dad days after he had knee surgery this past December). He has been through a lot the past 1.5 years, I surely can understand it if he wants to try to avoid surgery on his little girl – especially when the doc’s doesn’t even agree that early surgery isn’t is the best route…
Anyway, I wish L.B. and his adorable little girl the very best! I hope she’ll get the (normal) childhood she truly deserves!