Baby Allen's eye appointment was this morning. We met with Dr. Aaron Fay after meeting first with his fellow, a woman who's name I cannot remember. She took some pictures of AJ, measured his eye lids a bit and not much more. I gave them the report from Dr. Laby...but it was pretty clear that they knew what needs to be done...surgery. Its called frontalis suspension...there is an interesting article here. "The advantage of silicone frontalis sling is that it requires small skin incisions and less surgical time. This technique can be performed in all eyes with ptosis and poor levator function, which necessitates frontalis sling." That is a bit of a comfort...small skin incision....ugh...i want to cry every time I think about all of this. Dr. Fay is a young guy...blonde hair in a pony tail...and seems to know his stuff. He did say that he is working on a new procedure to correct ptosis but its about 10 years away...at least I know he's working on it. I'm all over the place with this today I know. AJ was awesome at the appointment, full of smiles and giggles. One thing to note that I had read and did ask the doctor about is that AJ's eye will not close all the way for quite a while, perhaps months or years...this does not mean that it will be all the way open when he tried to sleep but it will not be closed all the way...I guess we will have to just wait and see. We will have to put ointment or salve on his eye when he goes to bed at night.
The surgery is scheduled for November 1 at 7:00AM and we have to be at Mass Eye and Ear at 5:30AM...i'm thinking we wont be sleeping too much the night before. Ok, should I get a second opinion? I talked with Allen about it. I trust Dr. Laby and he trusts Dr. Fay. I've been online for a bit this afternoon researching Dr. Fay and I like what I see. He has published articles in journals of Ophthalmic medicine. Bottom line is that the surgery needs to be done. If nothing is done it is almost guaranteed that AJ will become legally blind in his left eye and his spine will not develop correctly because of the head tilt. Is this THE worst thing EVER in the history of surgeries? No. Will it help our little guy? Yes. Does it seem like the worst thing ever in his little life right now? Yes...but he wont remember it and he'll be so much better off than if nothing was done. His follow up apointment is Friday November 11th.
I do have some questions for the doc that of course I didn't think of until the drive home...
will he need additional surgeries? if so, when? how many? how often? will he have a scar? when will his eye close all the way? ever? will the astigmatism correct itself? will the "misaligned" eye correct itself? will he need to patch the right eye? will he need glasses when this is all done? how long are the silicone rods good for? do they need to be replaced?
Some of the questions are for Dr. Fay and some are for Dr. Laby.
Well, that is it for now....i'm sure i'll be blogging more later, if not today then maybe tomorrow.
"Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn't know you had, and dealing with fears you didn't know existed." ~Linda Wooten
No comments:
Post a Comment