Alysse started school on June 9th and a few days later came down with a cold. She had the snotty nose for the whole month, and the last weekend of June, her eyes puffed up and she came down with a cough. I have never seen her eyes so swollen. June 30th she had her follow up appt with the ophthalmologist and even though she had puffy eyes and a runny nose, I took her in. She didn't have a fever or anything and I wanted the dr to see her eyes at worse case scenario. This was as bad as it got. Her droopy eye was REALLY low, poor baby.
The dr freaked out when I told him she didn't patch anymore. I can't keep a patch on a 12-18 month old. It's IMPOSSIBLE!!!! First of all, I have to order special patches off the internet b/c she has sensitive skin. When we use the cheap bandaid looking ones, her face breaks out and gets red welts where the patch was. The ones I order online are not cheap. They lose stickiness once it's pulled off the first time. So when Alysse pulls it off the minute I put it on, the patch won't go back on. So I just stopped putting them on all together. Her eye has looked really good when she wasn't sick and she definitely uses it.
That didn't matter. Her ophtho was not happy that she wasn't patching and since he saw how bad her lid looked he immediately sent us to a plastic surgeon downtown at TX Children's. I got worried b/c we went from having surgery when she was 7 to immediately having surgery. Her dr is all over the place.
I took Alysse downtown and it was nuts - not a place I want to go to on a regular basis. The plastic surgeon was so quick - we were in and out in 15 minutes. He said she didn't look that bad to him. He definitely didn't want to do surgery right now, and in fact as long as her vision was good, he didn't want to do surgery until she was 11 or 12. He said his cuts will be exact when she is that age, and anytime before that he has to estimate where to cut. He wants to see her back in three months for a follow up and just wants to monitor her. I asked how we will decide when to do the surgery and he said it would be a collective decision between her ophtho, me and him. But if the ophtho said she needed surgery, then he would do the surgery.
So that was good news - no surgery right now. The yucky news is that everything is weighing on her ophtho. I have never had a warm gushy feeling about him and my gut tells me I need a 2nd opinion. I just need to decide when to do that. He isn't saying surgery right now, and the plastic surgeon agrees with that. So I might just wait to see another ophtho until her current one feels like surgery is necessary.
In the meantime I have to get creative on making her wear the patch. It isn't easy, but we can make it to 30 minutes or so a day. She doesn't like wearing it but I talk her through it, why we do it and how it helps her. She seems to understand that and will wear it until she just can't take it anymore.
This was when she was sick.
This is a normal good day
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