Evyn's Eyes

The day after Evyn was born, the hospital pediatrician did her newborn checkup. She came in to speak to me a few hours later and Nick had gone home to check on the cat and get away for a bit. She began to tell me about an abnormality with Evyn's eye and went into a vague, but long explanation of what they saw and what they think it could be. I had a pretty horrific birth experience so I was exhausted from lack of sleep, in a lot of pain, and my mind was already cluttered with the whole experience and thoughts of what the heck I was doing with my life. I tried to listen as best I could so I could explain to Nick when he got back, but I knew I wouldn't be much help. Another doctor came in later to look at her eye again in the room and he agreed with the pediatrician's assessment that we needed to see a specialist (pediatric ophthalmologist as soon as possible). The next day the pediatrician came back when Nick was there and re-explained what she saw. Nick did some googling and had a pretty good idea of what was going on, but I don't think we knew the entire scope of what was to come. Evyn was born on a Friday afternoon and we were released from the hospital Sunday afternoon. Monday morning we called the Ophthalmologist the hospital referred us to and booked an appointment right away. They were able to get us in that Thursday. We took her in and the doctor examined her eyes for a while. They then did 3 rounds of eye drops to dilate her pupils well so they could look even further back. The doctor then talked to us for a while about her diagnosis. She had a very large opaque cataract in her right eye. She recommended surgery to remove the cataract as soon as possible; the earliest they recommend is 4 weeks to reduce the risk of other complications. She said the surgery would be pretty simple, but the after care was the more important part and was going to be a lot of work. She said Evyn would need a contact in her cataract eye after the surgery to serve as the lens that they remove during the surgery. This contact will be used (RX will change throughout the years) for several years ideally until her eye finishes growing around 4-5 years old. Also she will need to start patching the non-cataract eye for hours each day to ensure it does not overcome the weaker eye and shut it down completely. This patching would continue for years as well, probably until 7-8. We took in a lot of information that day. I think I was so overwhelmed I really didn't have time to be upset or scared or sad about it all. It still seemed so far away and for now I wanted to just enjoy my baby the way she was born. We scheduled her surgery for 4 weeks old and life went on. A couple of weeks later I came across another blog of a family who went through the same thing. As I read through the blog I had a total breakdown. The contacts, the patching, the surgery. It all sounded so difficult and agonizing. Of course new mom hormones were probably making me overreact, but I think it was the first time I left everything totally sink in. I stopped reading and googling after that. The morning of her surgery she couldn't eat for 4 hours ahead of time. I fed her around 3am and she went back to sleep for a bit before we had to get up and head to the hospital. It was done at Children's in Plano. It was a really nice hospital and all of the staff was so nice. Evyn did so great with not eating. She didn't even cry the entire time we were there before she went into surgery and she was awake! That really took some stress off of the morning for sure. They dilated her pupils, weighed and measured her and then took her back. Nick and I went and had breakfast downstairs and by the time we came back up they told us the surgery was complete (about 45 minutes total). We met with the Dr. and she said the surgery went perfectly, however they were able to take a closer look at the left eye and found a very small cataract there as well. They said the right eye cataract could also grow back so they will continue to monitor both for any change. We were anxious to see her right after the surgery, but she was in recovery and sleeping/still on anesthesia for about an hour afterward. I was worried she would be starving by the time we got to see her, but they said they had her on an IV with sugar water to keep her blood sugar up. Once we got to see her she had a big white bandage over her eye and her voice sounded raspy. We stayed in recovery with her for several hours that day and just held her and watched TV. She ate pretty normal and was doing good; not grumpy or anything. They did end up having to do an X ray because her BP dropped and found a huge gas bubble in her stomach. I had noticed her stomach seemed very distended and hard, but just thought it was a fat baby tummy. They had to stick a tube down her throat (awake) to relieve the gas for her. That was probably the most unpleasant part of the entire day. We were able to go home in the afternoon and she rested most of the night. The next day she was back to normal and we went to see her doctor and remove the bandage. She had some red/bloodiness in the corner of her eye, but it really wasn't bad. The doctor inserted her contact at the visit and gave us the patches to start immediately. She also had 3 different eye drops we had to put in several times a day which was probably the most annoying thing to keep up with, but we knew we wanted to do everything possible to give her the best outcome for her vision. And so it began.