Saturday, February 06, 2010

More surgery

This was not at all a surprise to Mark and I as we were pretty sure Danielle's patching was not doing the trick. She will be having eye surgery again in April. :(

At this point they think they will only be operating on one eye--her right one. We've been patching the left eye to try to strengthen the right one but it's just not cooperating. :) She still does not use both eyes to focus. Thankfully her left eye seems to be holding steady so hopefully we'll just have one more surgery and then be done. The nurse said they usually don't do more than three surgeries on a child although they can.

I struggle with her having surgery again because it feels like it's more of a cosmetic surgery to make her eyes look better. But in reality it is critical that her eyes work together. If we allow her right eye to continue to drift, eventually her body will stop using that eye for vision and it will go blind. We certainly want to give Danielle every opportunity for the best vision possible, so if surgery is what it takes we'll do it!

It is a relatively minor surgery and we know what to expect. Plus we have the benefit now of Danielle having a better understanding of what's going on and a better attachment to us. Right now we've got her scheduled on a day she's out of school so she won't even have to miss that. She will be very happy about that--the girl loves school!

1 comment:

Pat G. said...

Hey Courtney, Noelle had exactly the same problem as a little girl. She had the surgery at around 3 or 4 years old. We went to Long John Silvers for dinner after that a couple of times because I wanted to wear an eyepatch too. :)

I'm sure that Danielle will thank you mightily for you taking care of this for her.