Dr. Trese checked the pressure in both eyes, which was fifteen, a very good pressure for a little girl who had zero pressure eight weeks ago. That means the Healon he injected in both eyes is maintaining and since eyes need pressure to hold the structures in place, this bit of news is good news.
He performed surgery on her right eye which involves putting teeny, tiny instruments into her eye to both see and do things. Being inside her eye gives Dr. Trese a better idea of what’s happening overall than he’d otherwise have from an external inspection.
The retinal fold blocking about forty percent of her field of vision is still there and remained there at the end of the procedure. He thought it might be a thin piece of scar tissue but instead it was quite thick. That fold may be there for good, time will have to tell there.
He next removed the scar tissue blocking her field of vision. After that he could see her optic nerve which is still attached, as is most of her retina. She doesn’t have tremendous blood vessels in the retina, which isn’t great, but that’s been something she’s had since this all started. The optic nerve also looks attached and healthy. He said the retina looks healthy even though it has less blood flow than a normal retina. I’m not sure if this means she has less visual capacity (if the retina is working in the first place) so we’ll have to wait and see.
When they inserted one of their instruments there was a little gush of brown, old blood. It is possible this blood has remained since one of the prior procedures and could have been why the retinal fold has scared the way it did as the old blood organized and formed sclera blood tissue. There was also a little drop of new blood that remains in her field of vision from the procedure today. The prudent course of action is to leave that drop in place and let it resolve on its own.
Dr. Trese’s suggestion is to consider patching soon once healing is complete in a few weeks (or possibly earlier). He said her vision will be suppressed from the brain side because she’s been so dependent on her left eye for her vision for such a length of time. Her right eye doesn’t know what to do with the images it’s seeing, "but her brain should be able to do a little more understanding in terms of seeing what’s coming in because her left eye is far from perfect” he said.
She has more drops (because drops four times per day wasn’t fun enough). The increase of steroid drops to six times each day will hopefully help prevent more scar tissue from forming. She also has antibiotic drops for two weeks and gets to wear a stylish metal patch over her eye to protect it for two weeks. The patch has holes in it, and Dr. Trese suggested using bright lights in her eye to try and stimulate the retina/brain connection. Yes, in this case we are suppose to shine bright lights into her eye, interesting, no?
So unknown news, but we’re hopefully good news in the future. We’ll have to wait and see.
The Big Boy Update: My son was picked up by our neighbors from school today because I was in class. When I got home he’d made muffins with them and had shared them with all the children on the block.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: This is the “smashed” part of the blog post title. At the mall after surgery my daughter slipped and smashed her chin. My husband called and we called a doctor friend of ours, sharing the picture of her chin and discussing the potential need for stitches. In the end, my husband decided to go to an urgent care. Thankfully they had no patients in the waiting room and they were in and out in thirty minutes. They decided the cut was shallow enough to not need stitches. My daughter is sporting a pressed closed wound with steri-strips for the next week so the tissues can grow back together and heal with minimal scaring. Here’s the photo we debated over, considering the depth of the cut and the raggedness of the edges. If you click it and zoom in you can see why we were debating stitches:
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