The angle I took the picture from isn’t great and it is a real ‘snap’ because I quickly wanted to capture something that I hadn’t seen before.

We, as well as a few doctors and therapists, have been speculating about Pádraig’s eyes for quite some time now.

What we know is that he can see with both eyes though it seems that his sight is slightly better in one eye than in the other eye. We know that often he seems to have his eyes closed making people think that he is asleep when, in fact, he is just relaxing his eyes, or he might be concentrating on something that doesn’t require his eyes to be open. Having his eyes closed doesn’t mean he is asleep.

He rarely opens both of his eyes. We have asked him why and we have consulted with doctors. There is a ‘view’ saying that because his eyes are not aligned (following the accident and operations) he might have double vision when he opens both eyes at the same time. And that this is the reason he keeps one of his eyes closed most of the time, and he just opens one of his eye — usually the left eye.

Today, for a while, and for the first time, he switched eyes. He kept his left eye closed and he opened his right eye. When I asked him he said that he could see ok with his right eye.

I had to think about those strokes with the ice across various muscles in his face over the past week and a half during his SLT sessions, and was wondering whether they were having an effect!