Rental is Not The Same Thing is Retinal

I have been in the land of eyes for what feels like months now but has been, in fact, less than a month.  How can it be that thirty days ago everything seemed to be fine with my daughter’s eyes and now we’re dealing with a possibly year-long treatment for a not-definitively diagnosed condition that I can explain in detail including lots of medical terms I would have been thrilled to never have known about?   I was at our Back to School Social last night and I saw a piece of paper on the table during set up and did a double take because the sheet was about retinas.   What was this?   Oh, never mind it was the “Rental” order.

We have dived deep as a family into a some cold, cold medical water and we’re doing what we can to swim back to the top, climb up to the surface and get back on our beach towels so we can return to basking in the sun.    I have folders of pictures.   I have documents of notes.   I created a Google Drive folder into which I’ve put medical test results since her medical records are confidential.   I’ve emailed, texted—good grief, have I texted—I’ve been on the phone and I’ve had conversations with so many people I lost count.

I had a list for a while with everyone who had contacted me about my daughter.   They wanted to know how she was doing or what the results of the tests were or if she was better.   I told people I’d let them know and I knew I was going to leave people out if I didn’t keep track of them.    Eventually, I got overwhelmed and the list is now incomplete by a good measure.   The good news is that by two weeks or so into things, people were catching other people up on the situation.

Then there were the conversations.   Everyone wanted to know what was happening, and if there were other people present, such as any time I was at school when other parents would overhear, they would be alarmed (as would I had I heard about a friend’s child) and I’d start the story all over again. I am pretty good at this point at giving a succinct start-to-now summary of the situation I think it’s fair to say.

Soon, I hope to be more focused on “rental” things, having put all this “retinal” stuff behind us.

The Big Boy Update:  We went to see Nana and Papa today.   As we called to tell them we were on the road this morning, my son yelled out from the back seat, “Nana, put out the tea set!”   I asked later and Nana told me during Labor Day, when my daughter and I couldn’t make it up to see them because she was in the hospital, they didn’t put out the tea set to play with because she wasn’t there.   He knew she liked playing with it and wanted to make sure it was out for her when we arrived.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We were walking in a park this afternoon on a path in the woods.   I said I could smell the pine trees.   My daughter said, “I can smell the bricks…and I can smell the sun!”