I Can See Everything

This is a good post.   I’d even call it a breakthrough day.   I was ecstatic, but honestly now I’m cautiously optimistic.    The good news is my daughter has opened her eye and she can see things.   She’s not fully sighted, but she can certainly see more than she could with her eye closed and we think she has the potential to see a lot more than she did pre-surgery.    But let me go back a bit first…

We’ve been trying to get her to open her eye since surgery last Wednesday.   She has been resistant, saying her eye was stinging and everything was infernally bright.   The brightness seemed to abate over time but the stinging persisted.   We were hoping to get a refraction done at her follow-up visit on Friday but in order to do so she would have to look into a machine and look at the red dot, keeping her eye still enough for the machine to take her measurements.

This morning I took her into our pantry, shut the door and in the complete dark shined a little red toy light on the floor and wall, asking her to look for it.   I got screams and cries of, “it stings!”   She was resistant to the point I gave up after a while.    I messaged Dr. Grace and she sent back that it would be understandable if her eye stung because there was a stitch they put in that she might be feeling.   The stitch would dissolve in short order and not to worry too much about complaints of stinging.

There was another sad thing that happened as well.   My husband was talking to her, saying it was important to try and look so she could see which glasses helped more.   My daughter didn’t want to look, saying, “I can’t see anything.   This is what happened to my right eye.”

That comment gave me chills.  That was my daughter effectively saying she thought the surgery had taken away her vision and she was watching it disappear just like her right eye had.   I called her therapist with a rather urgent, “we need some guidance now” message.   Then, just a few hours later, I’d suggested my daughter use the iPad and try to “peek” whenever she could.   No pressure, I was sitting beside her working on the bed.   And that’s when it happened.

Suddenly my daughter said, “when I go further away the iPad is smaller”.  I looked up and she had her eye open.   Completely open.   I asked her if she could see and she was quite excited and said she could.   We hugged, and then she started looking around on the bed.   She could see the pattern in the comforter, she looked off the bed and said, “I see the laundry basket”.   She then followed up with, “I see the clothes in the laundry basket, I’ve never seen that before.”    She looked across the room and said, “I see the light switch.  I see the wall through the door.”    She was seeing at a distance, with apparently some level of clarity.   And then the best comment of the day—she said, “I can see everything!”

I sent a franticly excited text to the play therapist saying, “Ignore last message, her eye is open and she can see!”  I sent similar messages to her doctor, my husband and best friend.   At this point I’m so used to bad news I think I was in shock and didn’t quite know how to take it.  I think I should have been crying but I was in awe, watching her move around, watching her actually look at things at a distance.

 My husband called and my daughter wanted to hold the phone and explain what she was seeing.   She’s known there was a red hangup button on the phone before but today she said, “what are those other buttons on the phone?”   She could see the small white outline buttons for mute, speakerphone, add call, FaceTime, etc.   I explained each one and then asked if she wanted to FaceTime dad.   She did and when his picture came up she said, “I can see your face!”

For the remainder of the day we’ve been having her try on the various glasses to see which prescription works best.   That is still up in the air, but she seems to like the +17 pair the best.   To put things in perspective though, while she can see, she’s not back to normal vision.   She’s still quite visually impaired, but this is a very big improvement from what we can tell so far.

The Big Boy Update:  My son explained to me, “I’m afraid of the water…because it’s wet.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Her left eye is open and she can see.   She’s excited about it and so are we.   I’m not sure the day could have been any better for her and us.