Eye Surgery

It has been just over a week since Danny had his eye surgery. I have posted some pictures on Facebook and on my photography blog but I thought I’d post a couple here too. Cover all my bases so to speak. Besides, I thought maybe I ought to record a little about the actual history for posterity’s sake. For most people this will be a long and boring post but I do want to write it all down while it is still fairly fresh in my mind.

Back at the beginning of March, Danny got glasses. The optometrist told us that he was extremely far-sighted and had accommodative esotropia. He referred up to Dr. Ludwig—a pediatric ophthalmologist who operates out of several offices covering a large portion of southeast region of the united states. We went to see her and she had us start patching his right eye for 7 hours a day. She diagnosed him with strabismus (crossed-eyes), amblyopia (lazy eye) and reaffirmed the diagnosis of accommodative esotropia. She also said that he was legally blind in his left eye. After a very challenging month of trying to get a two year old to keep a patch on his eye for 7 hours a day we returned to see her. She was very complimentary and said that we had done a great job with the patching and his eyesight had improved vastly but told us that we would need to have surgery to correct the strabismus. The surgery was scheduled for July 23. 

We made all the necessary preparations and arrangements for lodging. July 23 came and Daniel woke up with a fever that morning (it ended up lasting less than 24 hours). We went to the surgery center and after talking to the anesthesiologist, it was determined that because of the fever the surgery would have to wait. I spoke with Dr. Ludwig’s assistant on the phone right there in the pre-operative waiting room and we rescheduled the surgery for August 27. That meant another whole month of waiting, stressing, going back to the pediatrician for surgical clearance, etc.  but we did not want to do anything that might put him at risk so we gladly waited.

A couple of days before the surgery Dr. Ludwig’s administrative assistant called and told us that because of some cancellations and schedule changes our arrival time had been moved up to 6:45 a.m. Great! Daniel would be the first surgery of the day. Not so great! We live two and a half hours from Dothan where the surgery was to take place so we would have to get up, get ready and leave before 4:30 a.m.

I made a couple of phone calls and our friends helped us out by coming over when we had to leave to stay with the boys and make sure that they got up and got ready for school on time. We left in the dark of very early morning to make it to our appointment. We arrived just a couple minutes late and got inside and signed in. After a short wait we were taken back to the pre-operative waiting room where we talked to the anesthesiologist, he was given a little bit of medicine to “help him relax” and then we waited for the surgeon to arrive and have them bring him back to the O.R. We were taken back out to the lobby to wait. I was pretty restless and had a hard time sitting still and just waiting but after a little while, despite my nervousness, my tiredness took over and I sat and waited. My nerves were not calmed any when a handcuffed and shackled prison inmate was brought by two armed guards to wait for whatever surgery he was having in the same small alcove of the lobby where David and I were waiting. After about 45 minutes a nurse came and got us and took us back to yet another waiting room to wait and talk with the surgeon (Dr. Ludwig). She told us that the surgery had gone well. She said that she had tightened the medial rectus muscles on both eyes and that she also noticed that the superior oblique muscles (muscles on top of the eye) were also weak so she took a small stitch in them as well.

After that we were taken back to be with him while he came out of the anesthesia. He finally woke up enough that we were able to be discharged but as soon as we got him out to the car he went right back to sleep. On the way home we stopped to grab some breakfast at Burger King and we purchased some sunglasses for him ($2 at Old Navy) since we were told his eyes would be very sensitive to light for awhile. He slept almost all the way home, waking briefly only twice to whimper a little before going back to sleep. When we got home, I fell asleep with him on the couch and we slept for another 4 hours. When we woke up it was obvious that he still didn’t feel well. After he threw up once I decided to go out and get him a few things that might help—coke, sprite, Tylenol, eye wash to clean off the outside of his eyes, etc. By the time I got home he was sitting on the couch with his brothers laughing at Loony Toons and feeling much better. The next day we dealt with some bloody noses as a result of the surgery. On the second day his eyes looked maybe even a little worse than they had the first day, with the whites all blood red. By the third day they started to gradually look better again. His post-operative appointment was Thursday. Dr. Ludwig told us that everything looks great and he appears to be healing perfectly. She didn’t do a very thorough examination because she said his eyes would still hurt too much to be able to get a good look at them. At this point he is to continue wearing the patch for two hours a day for maintenance purposes.When we go back in a month things may change. There is a 20% chance of relapse with this surgery but hopefully things will just continue to get better and we won’t have to go through all this again.

Danny seems to be feeling like his normal energetic self these days. He isn’t complaining at all or rubbing his eyes. He is cleared to play in the dirt again and I am feeling more at ease.

Thanks to all our friends and family for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. It really helped to lift our burdens at a stressful and uncertain time.