Emily's Eye Surgery

The afternoon of surgery, she's not as grumpy as she looks, but you can see one eye.

Taking a little break on mommy's legs

From today, if you click on the pictures you can see the eyes better.

I haven't mentioned much about Emily's eyes on here recently, but she had surgery on them yesterday to correct the eye crossing (strabismus). We went to the hospital at 6 am and after waiting for awhile in the big waiting room, we were taken back to a little pre-op room. They put a video on for her and we got her changed into her little hospital gown. They had a crib in the room for her, but she wanted nothing to do with that, so she sat on my lap while they did everything. After a bit, the anesthesiologist came into the room and started talking to us. He brought the mask that they use to put her under with and let Emily play with it for awhile. It smelled like strawberries and we practiced putting it on her face and mommy and daddy's, too. He went over her history and checked her over. Then the OR nurse showed up and our eye doctor. It was a pretty small little room (more of a cubicle), so there were a lot of people in with us. Once we went through all of the questions, Greg kissed Emily good bye and I took her into the operating room. They moved pretty quick once we were in there, they brought me a chair, I sat down with Emily on my lap and we put the mask that she had been holding on her face with the tubes attached to it. She fell asleep pretty quickly, so she was laid down on the table and got kisses from me and then the eye doctor walked me out. We talked about the surgery again, he asked if I had any more questions and then I met Greg in the waiting room.

About an hour and 15 minutes later, he came back out and told us that all went well. He went over what they did, and what we need to do after surgery at home. He also wrote down his cell number for us in addition to the night/weekend number in case we had any concerns over the weekend. When Emily started waking up, they let me go into recovery with her. Greg joined us about 15 minutes later. Emily was confused and uncomfortable. Almost like she was half asleep. They brought me a nice reclining chair on wheels and she was able to snuggle in on my lap. As long as she wasn't moved around she was fine, but she didn't like being moved once she was comfy. The nurse kept commenting about how well Emily woke up, I guess many kids scream and scream, but Emily only screamed a little bit, and the nurse referred to that as mild fussing. After a bit, they wheeled us into the same sort of area that we had been in before the surgery. As Emily came to a bit more, she got upset with the iv in her arm and the red light (pulse ox) on her toe. She was happy being sung to. She also saw the tv monitor that does the heart rate and asked to watch a movie on it. We got her to drink some water and tried to keep her relatively calm. When she cried, her tears were reddish pink and she didn't like having them wiped away. She was very happy to finally get her iv taken out and for us to get her ready to go home. She started asking for home and when I laid her down on the chair as I got her dressed she asked for a nap. Poor girl was tired.

She fell asleep on the drive home and then took a 2.5 hour nap at home. Once she got up, she did great and ate and drank like a champ the rest of the day. She would play well for a bit and then get tired and want a break and would lie down for a few minutes before getting up and playing again. While having her snack, she asked for her eye patch. She had been fighting it this past week, in general she's done great with it, so it was funny that she asked for it. She doesn't have to wear one right now, we'll see in a month or so if she has to start again. Tonight (Saturday) she asked for a patch for her monkey, Molly. We often pretend to put her patch on Molly before it goes on her.

Her eyes are much straighter now and she seems to be seeing some things differently. We went to a mall this afternoon and thought it would be a fun treat to have dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. We've never taken her there. She loved the fish as we walked in and after sitting at the table for 5 minutes, she completely freaked out, which she's never done for something like that. We ended up leaving before our drinks got there and once we were out of the restaurant, she was fine. We had a tasty food court dinner instead! We wondered if suddenly being able to see better contributed to her reaction at dinner. We won't really know, but we may try to take her again in several months, we really thought that she would think it was neat and we wanted to give her a special treat. We're hoping to take her to the little zoo by us tomorrow, so that'll be a good treat.

Tonight when I got her out of the car and she was in my arms, she looked at me and said, "mommy, you look nice." Wow! Maybe she is suddenly seeing better! One of the sweetest comments I've heard from her.

We go back to the eye doctor on Wednesday for our post-op visit. We also have to put an antibiotic cream in her eyes each night until Tuesday. We do it after she is asleep and it went ok last night. The inside corners of the eyes are fairly red and her eyes are a bit puffy. I put her hair in pigtails today so that it stayed out of her eyes. If you click on the pictures they will open up a bit bigger and probably easier to see the redness (if you want to see it, that is!).