Kathleen had her follow-up appointment from her eye surgery yesterday. As always, she is amazing. They spend close to an hour doing tests so see how her eyes respond and while she is absolutely exhausted by the time they are done, she still smiles and waves as we head out the door. It’s funny because they have lots of little toys and lights that they use to for the tests, to see how she tracks and how her eyes turn and so on, but she just wants to look at their faces and interact with them. Near the end, she was so ready to be done but they were still putting different glasses over her eyes which she particularly doesn’t like. She reached out, took the Opthamologist’s hand, and very firmly said “don’t”. Although she was still smiling even then, we all got the message!
So the verdict:
This is how her eyes turned pre-surgery. She almost never used both eyes together so only saw with one eye at a time. Isn’t she just the cutest, funniest little thing?
And this is how her eyes are now, three months after the surgery.
The change is very significant. Yet, she still almost always only uses one eye and apparently when she does use both, she is likely seeing double.
So the plan? In the next few weeks, we will need to decide on having more surgeries so that they can slowly line up her eyes. That was disappointing as we were really hopeful that she wouldn’t need any more because these next ones will be more invasive.
Part of me wants to say, forget it, she is doing fine and there is no guarantee that her eye sight will improve. But, then I think that it is likely easier to go through all of this now while she is little. Even though it’s hard, I want what is best for her. It’s just one of those times when I wish I didn’t have to be a decision making adult.
And in the mean time, right now, she doesn’t care that her eyes don’t line up. She just loves life. She laughs and she is talking and parroting everyone. She climbs and she dances. She gives amazing hugs and slobbery kisses. And we all love our Kathleen, our girl who embraces life with pure joy.
If you’ve a little one who has had eye surgery, especially for congenital esotrophy, I’d like to hear about it, how it went, if you’d do it again. Any thoughts as we make a decision would be appreciated!