I took Chip to the eye doctor today for another check of his cataract. (More details on this and his daily eye patching in a previous post. We’re up to an hour a day now.) We were in the waiting room and Chip decided to check out the mags.
[photo removed]
Yeah, he’s cute. But so much trouble! He’s going to have to have surgery for this cataract at some point since it is growing — slowly, but growing none the less (nonetheless?). The cataract will be removed and they’ll implant a replacement lens. He’ll wear glasses and maybe still have to do daily eyepatching anyway.
I always get freaked out after these appointments. He goes every 3 months or so, and each time we get a little bit more news. The last time he went in the doctor decided that this thing was a cataract for sure. They hadn’t been positive up until then, but the fact that it was growing apparently clinched it. The other possibility was that it was leftover fetal membrane. Some sort of thing that is supposed to disappear before birth. That would have been cool, because it wouldn’t have grown. He would just have had a white spot in the black part of his eye. If anything, it would have shrunk, or “involuted”. But nope, it is a cataract.
So the next step is that we go to a specialist at University of California at San Francisco. Dr. Fredricks, I think. He’s apparently an expert in all of this. The intraoccular lens is still considered experimental surgery in children, and we’re very lucky to have this guy so close to us. I think we’ll have this appointment in the next month or two.
I don’t mean for this to be a pity-me-post, but I do get sad after each time I take Chip to the eye doctor. He’s such a sweet, easy-going, “no worries, man” kind of kid that he’s the right one of my 3 kids to have to go through something like this, but it is a colossal drag for him that he has to do it.
The only thought that ever makes it feel better for me is that I know there are so many things worse than this that could be happening. He will survive. He will still be a silly, funny, trusting wonderful toddler who will grow up to be an amazing man. There are other children out there who have far worse things happening to them. I figure the worst case for us (barring horrible and unlikely medical tragedies) is that something will go wrong in or after the surgery and he will lose the use of his eye. Terrible, yes, but he would get over that.
Mr. Plain has about a 60% hearing loss, and he was remarkably unaffected by it during his childhood and now as well. I figure that Chip can deal with all of this, so I can too. But it still makes me sad.
Promise, I’ll be funny (or at least try) again tomorrow. I’ll let you know the date for our next appointment so you can skip reading here that day ;)
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