October 13

This morning we were scheduled to go into TCH for an EUA and most likely glaucoma surgery. But about 30 minutes after you were taken the doctor had us paged. The best we could have hoped for happened and he decided surgery wasn’t necessary! He said your eye pressures looked great (as did the retina) and he chose not to operate! Praise God.

The only disappointment of the day was the inability to start an IV on you. An EUA begins by putting you under lightly with the air mask, examination to see if the surgery is necessary, and only if it is do they start an IV. Even though you didn’t need the operation, the plan was to go ahead and put you completely under to fit your eyes for contacts and check your prescription. However, after many unsuccessful attempts to start an IV (Daddy and I counted at least 12) they decided it wasn’t worth it and began to let you wake up. I had warned several people in advance that you have very small veins and are a hard stick. Unfortunately this message wasn’t relayed to the anesthesiologist until right before you were taken away. He later told me if he had known, he would have made sure you were the first surgery this morning. Instead your 8:30 surgery didn’t begin until 9:30 and your already small veins were dehydrated from 7 hours of no fluids and even more difficult to stick. His recommendation for next time is to continue feeding until just a couple hours before surgery and insist on being the first surgery of the day so that your veins will be as plump as possible. If that doesn’t work you will need either a PIC line or another central line.

Still, nothing can dampen our elation over the good news. We are all for less incisions and chances for infection and we were pleasantly surprised to be released by noon. So the next step is ptosis surgery, right now scheduled for November 6. I popped in to see the surgery scheduler today hoping to move up the date since you won’t be needing the recovery time we had anticipated. However, as of now no earlier OR slots are available. I told her we would be on standby and if anything came up to please let me know. I am anxious to get you into your contacts as soon as possible. The only hurdle in the meantime is insurance. Right now they are refusing to cover any of the ptosis surgery, since so often this is an elective procedure for cosmetic reasons. The doctor’s office has explained to them how critical this surgery is for developing your vision, but still they refuse to budge. Our caseworker is seeing what she can do—I have learned to have confidence that God will work it all out.

Ok love. I am missing you as I write this. It is time to head back into the house to cuddle with you and Daddy a few hours before bed. I love you so.