Tuesday, July 03, 2007

What a day!

We survived a second round of eye surgery for Everett today. He's dealt with blocked tear ducts in both eyes since he was an infant. We had his first surgery about a year ago but it was not effective. That's normal in about 5% of cases. The first surgery is just a probe that goes in and opens the tear ducts. Today he had small balloon-like instruments inserted into his tear ducts and they were inflated for a few minutes to make sure the tear ducts would no longer be clogged. Hopefully this will work. In 1% of cases they have to do a third procedure which involves the installation of tubes in the tear ducts that stay in for 3 months. Hopefully we won't have to go there.

Today's procedure maybe lasted about 15 minutes but he had to undergo anesthesia which meant he couldn't eat anything 4 hours before his surgery. Since his surgery was at 12:30pm, he couldn't eat anything after midnight and only water or clear liquids up until 8:30am. After that nothing. I was so worried about keeping him happy all morning without anything to eat or drink. He really did great though. We started off watching Sesame Street, but the theme of the day was "eating", so we didn't stay home for long. We went to the park for about an hour but it started raining. Then we drove around I-285 for awhile until it was almost time for the appointment. He took it all really well. When we got home he ate and drank a ton and has been sleeping for the past hour.

I'll be so glad not to have to constantly wipe his tears anymore. Or have people constantly ask if he's crying. It's definitely a small thing, but I'll be glad to have it be "normal".

We went to the beach with Allen's family last week. It was a great time. There are tons of new photos on our Flickr page.

Here is a photo we took of Everett after church on Sunday:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so sad for your little E. I had that same issue a couple of years ago. My eye watered all the time for over a year and I finally had to have surgery too. But he is just a little guy....praying that it will work for him too.

Brea said...

What a little trooper! I've actually never noticed his eyes leaking tears. I'll pray that this procedure does the trick!

katie said...

oh... we didn't know. give him a squeeze from us...

trmills said...

So glad the surgery went well; that must have been so overwhelming for you and for him. Thank goodness it's over!

Glad to see the new pictures; he's growing up so much...