Benefit vs risk

Obsidian had his dilated eye exam.  To put it mildly, he hated the blurriness that you get when your eyes are dilated.  He didn't complain too much when getting the drops and calmed down right away but the fury when his eyes started to dilate.  Unfortunately, it is really hard to explain what is happening to a 2 year old.

The good news is that he doesn't appear to be near or far sighted and all of the structures in his eyes that you can see appear healthy, including his optic nerve.  I expected this to be what was seen.  However it doesn't really help with deciding what the next step will be for trying to figure out why he has the issues he does.  Neither Jet or I am really that comfortable with having him sedated so a MRI can be done unless it is absolutely necessary.  Part of the question is, what are the potential benefits from having the MRI.  The MRI might or might not lead to a diagnosis.  The two things that the neurologist and geneticist would be mostly be looking for is the structure of the pituitary gland and signs of a mitochondrial disease.  Unless it is a cancerous tumor of the pituitary (which is very very unlikely), there is nothing they can do treatment wise for either problems with the pituitary or a mitochondrial disease.  Pituitary gland problems, they treat the hormone that is not being produced in correct quantities, and Obsidian has already been tested for those and they are either in normal range or he is too young to start treating the potential growth hormone issue.  For mitochondrial disease, they just treat the symptoms.  For the most part we are already doing that.  He eats frequent meals, in whatever amount he wants to eat.  We try not to expose him to too much heat as he doesn't tolerate it well.  So while we might get a diagnosis (which is a huge might), there is no treatment for what they are looking for (there is always the chance they find something they really aren't looking for, but I'm not even going down that road).  So Obsidian would be exposed to the risk of sedation without any real benefit treatment wise to him.  If he still needs a diagnosis when he is older and bigger, we could do the MRI then.

So now we just have to tell the doctors, thanks, but not now.