Twenty-six Hours

My daughter and I are about to fly off to Detroit for her follow-up visit since her surgery last week.   She has been managing fairly well after the surgery but has had a hard time adjusting.   She keeps the right eye closed a lot of the time and hates the additional drops we have to do.

Prior to surgery we had prednisone drops in each eye four times per day and a dilation drop in the right eye once each day.  Now she has prednisone drops six times in each eye, antibiotic drops four times in the right eye and a dilation drop once each day.   It’s a lot of drops and they hurt because she has incisions that are healing in her right eye.

She spends a lot of time in a ball on the floor facing down when she thinks things are too bright, or more commonly, when we tell her it’s time for drops.    She has been interested in wearing her glasses more though, which might be an indication she’s getting some information from her right eye—if she’s opening it, that is.

In a few weeks when the incisions are healed and we’re finished with the antibiotic drops we’ll start patching the left eye and see if she really can see anything in the right other than super, duper, painful light (that’s me paraphrasing her).

For now, we have a twenty-six hour trip to Detroit and back for an office visit.   Per usual, my daughter is excited about going on the trip.   I’m not excited about the high of fifteen degrees and low of five degrees.    At least there’s no snow predicted.

The Big Boy Update:  When my son opened his birthday present from Grandma Shu he saw a Lego dog and duck set.   He said, ”Aww, that’s so cute”.   I’d never heard him say anything like this before, he not being the type to declare things cute.   Then, a few days later he was itchy with dry skin and I found an old baby eczema cream tube in their bathroom.   As I was putting it on his legs he looked at the picture of the little baby on the front and said in a baby talk voice, “he’s so cute”.   It would appear my son is in fact into cute.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was lying in bed getting ready to go to sleep when she told my husband, “Dr Trese might make my eye better, but he might make my eye badder.”   It’s hard to know what to say when your child says something like that that could be true.  How do you explain we’re doing everything we can to help her, but it’s going to be long, hard and painful sometimes.