United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

The name for the different coloured eyes is heterochromia iridis. It can happen with Horner's syndrome altho as eye colour is set by the age of 2 years it is rare in tbpi, more common in obpi. David Bowie has heterochromia, he got his as a teenager after a fight, along with Horner's, so it can happen, but I've never spoken to a tbpi with this.

my daughter also has the conjuntivitus on the injured side. I don't know why I separate the two.
jenny

I think it's related my husband and I, and my other two children are 20/20 and my son with brachial plexus
palsy developed ambliopia - the vision in the one eye was so damatically worse that the brain was shutting the eye off. Was treated quite successfully by patching over good eye, forcing the bad eye to work. Vision gain was dramatic over a year or two but never reached the vision level of the other eye.At leasst if something happened to the good eye now he would not be legally blind as would have been the case if vision not treated.

JennyB..... >>>>>> [swooning]
thanks for the digression! hahaha

Joshua, You may want to have his eyes tested for vision because my son's vision was so poor in one eye that the eye was legally blind and the brain then starts to just shut that eye down. My son showed no signs of vision problem and was reading as well. When I took him to vacinated at 5yrs the nurse decided to do a quick vision test as she always did. The first eye had perfect vision and I said "That's what I thought, we all have good vision in our family and Richard seems to have no trouble seeing" then she went to the other eye and he could only read the very top line on the chart I was shocked to say the least. The problem with this even though he seemed to function normally was that really he would have poor depth perception, limited vision out to the one side and perhaps most importantly if there ever was a problem with the good eye he would be left with only a legally blind eye to work off of. The treatment was to completely patch the good eye forcing the brain to use the bad eye and get it working again. This was a awful time as the vision was so bad he would bump into things and couldn't read properly etc.
he felt very self conscious about it and to comfort him I got myself a patch and waould wear my patch when he wanted me to when we went out for the first while. The treatment was very successful and the vision made huge improvements. Now his vision is only two lines apart and with glasses he has 20/20.

Hi AngelaD,
My obpi has resulted in limited use of my short left arm. I had always thought that there was something wrong with my left eye and reading about Horner's syndrome on the internet has confirmed it for me. My left eye seems a bit smaller then the right, the lid droops slightly and the pupils are always dilated. I’m 49 years old and began wearing reading glasses about 3 years ago. The left eye’s sight is definitely worse then the right. I have always noticed a slight difference in the way I see color through each eye. I discovered this perceptual difference when I was in my teens. My feet turn out and as a child it was very difficult to walk without sort of dragging my feet a little. My parents used to scream at me to make a special effort to keep my feet straight and don’t shuffle them when I walk. They still get away from me unless I’m thinking specifically about how I’m walking and they’re constantly badgering me about it has really left some emotional scaring. I have a friend with a very similar degree of damage, his right arm was affected, and I’ve noticed that his feet point out and he walks with a fairly severe shuffle, or dragging, of his feet. The shoes of-course wear on their outer sides. Nobody else in my family has any sign of Horner's syndrome (they’re eyes are normal), but my sister’s feet used to point inward a little bit. She was able to over come her problem in short order as a child and walks normally. She doesn’t have a bp injury. Yes, your child’s eye problem is probably Horner’s syndrome which is relate to the bpi in that (and I’ve read this on the internet) it is fairly common for people with a bp injury to have Horner’s syndrome as well. I think I read that the reason they often occur together is that the affected nerves in bpi and Horner’s are physically close by each other. I don’t know if the foot problem is directly related but I suspect that it is. I hope this helps. Good luck. cdiamondstein@yahoo.com