I'm a big kid now!

Tommy has grown and changed in so many ways over the years.  As I keep repeating, I am continually amazed at how little of a role "the eye" plays into our every day lives.  As he has gotten bigger, he has been more and more interested in taking care of his contacts by himself!  This past summer, when he was 5 years old, he started learning to take his contact out.  Here are some of his first tries at self care!

We have also started trying to have him put them in.... we aren't quite as successful there!  (Please excuse the crazy mama in the background!)

Patching Works!

We went for another follow-up visit to the ophthalmologist (1 month post-op)... and finally had some good news!  Tommy's original contact prescription was +32 diopters, at the last visit it changed to +23 D.  That is a significant change!  To put it in a little perspective, a typical farsighted contact prescription for an adult would be ~+3.1D.
While Tommy's prescription is still a HUGE correction, it represents positive results!  The doctor and the nurse were impressed with his progress.  He patches 2 hours per day,while not easy, it has been worth it!  They also mentioned that his eye was getting bigger- more good news!  Since he has PHPV it is (was?) possible that the eye wouldn't grow.  So, the eye is growing and seems to be improving.  We won't be able to tell his real vision prognosis until later, but for now, I choose to be optimistic!

Post-Op: More bad news

After about an hour and a half we were ushered into a consult room.  Admittedly this made me a little nervous.   They didn't make anyone else go into a room... what could it be?  Luckily, we didn't have very long to dwell on the "what ifs" because our ophthalmologist came in fairly quickly.  He sat us down and told us that the cataract surgery went well and the cataract was removed.  Unfortunately, he also told us that Tommy has PHPV (Persistent Hyperplastic Primary Vitreous).  He explained that this was a lack of development in the back of the eye and he didn't know how much of the back of the eye was involved yet.  He said that there was a wide range of severity with this condition, but couldn't tell Tommy's prognosis yet.  This was disheartening, but our baby was out of surgery!  We had to wait a little bit longer before we were brought back to the recover area.

In the recovery area our little Tommy was wrapped up in a big warm blanket and was being cuddled by one of the nurses.  He looked so little!  He had the protective patch over his eye, which would stay on until the next morning.  This nurse mentioned that he might be a little sleepy as they had just given him morphine since he was screaming (my guess is that the poor little guy was hungry!)  We finally got to hold him- and waited for him to wake up a bit so I could feed him.  We noticed that his eye patch was coming off a little bit.  We called his nurse over (which was not the same one who was cuddling him) who basically blew us off.  Tommy ate- and I handed him over to his dad.  At this point, the patch was over his eye, but was gaping at one side so you could SEE his eye- while this was probably OK, we didn't want to have to deal with it falling off at night and us freaking out not knowing what to do.  So, we asked the nurse again- and she very reluctantly put more tape on.  But, she put it in such a strange spot, it really wasn't worth it.  We decided just to secure it at home.  We wanted to get out of there and go home!

Tommy slept all day long once we got home.  The family we had in town helped us cuddle him all day.  We kept him comfortable and he only needed a dose or two of acetaminophen.  Unfortunately, this meant he was awake ALL night long!  It is amazing how resilient children are, he really had very little residual issues related to surgery.  The next day (aside from a visit to the ophthalmologist), you never would have known he had been in surgery!

The waiting game

We had been told that our ophthalmologist was slow during surgery- that made us happy, we certainly didn't want him rushing.  So, we knew we had a long wait.    We were notified when Tommy was asleep and the surgery began and were told that they would update us every hour (if it lasted longer than an hour).  We were able to get a bite to eat and let our friends know that he was in surgery.  We watched as other surgeons came and talked to parents right in the waiting room.  Thankfully, there did not seem to be major drama for anyone around us.   Here is a link to what the surgery looks like (not Tommy's) - I haven't been able to watch it all the way through yet.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phradRutgOU

After about an hour and a half we were ushered into a consult room.  Admitedly this made me a little nervous.   They didn't make anyone else go into a room... what could it be?  Luckily, we didn't have very long to dwell on the "what ifs" because our ophthalmologist came in fairly quickly.  He sat us down and told us that the cataract surgery went well and the cataract was removed.  Unfortunately, he also told us that Tommy has PHPV (Persistent Hyperplastic Primary Vitreous).  He explained that this was a lack of development in the back of the eye and he didn't know how much of the back of the eye was involved yet.  He said that there was a wide range of severity with this condition, but couldn't tell Tommy's prognosis yet.  This was disheartening, but our baby was out of surgery!