August 14, 2015

Surgery #6


   Here I am, again, sitting in the waiting room waiting for Sadie to come out of surgery.  This is the last place I thought I would be this summer.  But as usual Sadie makes her own plans and I just do what she says.
   The summer has been full of eye infections.  Luckily, no ulcers like we have had in the past, but many scratches to the cornea that led to surface infections. It all started the week before school was out (so the last week of May).  She started poking herself in that eye and grabbing her cheek/eye area.  If you recall from my past posts, Sadie does not feel her eyes or her face for that matter.  So poking them doesn't hurt and she doesn't realize that she shouldn't do it.  It used to be a huge problem when she was a baby, but over the last year or so she has left them alone.  The beginning of June we started to visiting her eye Dr.  We also took her to the ENT to make sure it was not an ear or throat infection, we also even tried the dentist thinking that maybe it was her teeth that was bothering her.  All those appt's led to nothing, no reason for the poking.  It's just one of Sadie's little quirks.  However, this quirk can lead to big problems.
   As we continued to visit her eye Dr (frequently I might add) and tried many different ointments and washes, it became clear that we really needed to do something with this eye.  That's when surgery was mentioned. The Dr stated that if we couldn't get this eye infection under control that he wanted to do this fairly rare surgery that involved an amniotic sac  "band aid", sewing them half shut temporarily and some other stuff.  That night Sadie and I had a heart to heart chat about how we really don't need more surgery and she really needs to leave her eyes alone so that they heal.  She listened, for the most part.  Over the next week or two her eyes healed up and were looking good.  The eye Dr said there was no need for that surgery anymore. Yay!  But he wanted us to go to a plastic eye surgeon because of her bottom eyelids.  Sadie's eyelashes turn in because of where her eyelids lay.  Her eyelashes are scratching her cornea.  This is not new news.  We saw this same plastic surgeon when she was about 6 mo old or so for this same problem, but at that time he wanted to wait to do anything until she was older.
  The next week we got into see the surgeon and then surgery was scheduled for the next week.  Which leads us to today.  Her official surgery was called bilateral Entropion repair.  All they are going to do is make a small incision under both eyelids do whatever it is that they do and put some dissolving stitches in there.
  The surgeon hast two outcomes that he wants from this surgery. 1. the lashes will stop scratching her eyeballs and causing infections and 2. maybe open the eye itself up some more.  Sadie has squinty eyes.  I think it is more of a trait that she got from my husband. But squinty, plus a paralyzed side of face doesn't make a great combination.
 
 This was in the PACU. You can tell Sadie was not awake yet as she let me hold and play with her hand.

Now she's awake and happy.  Hasn't cried or complained.
 
Headed home!  She rocked this surgery out. No complications or issues.  She's becoming a pro at surgery.  I hate that she's had so many, but so thankful that she handles it so well.
 
And these are her "new" eyes.  They are wide open. Her eye lashes are no longer on her eyeball.  She looks so different to me!  But still just as cute as can be.

 
 
 
 
 

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