The Story of Miss 2 and Her Strabismus Surgery

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And now:  The Story of Miss 2 and Her Strabismus Surgery

(mostly written by my Dear Husband and edited by me)

Hospitals can be, and usually are, scary places. They smell funny (all that antiseptic), and are foreign. The colors are institutional, and the halls are filled with unfamiliar people. On top of all of that strangeness, we open not only our hearts and minds to those we meet there, but we open our bodies, like my long time friend Charity Tillemann Dick who recently underwent a double lung transplant.

But perhaps the hospital is most difficult for those who are left waiting.

Our family is not inexperineced when it comes to hospitals. After five kids we have made our rounds. Especially since our children are born by Cesarean. But on Monday we had a different experience. We sent one of our babies away, without us, for surgery.

As you may have gathered from earlier posts, Miss 2 needs visual help. She was blind as a bat, without sonar, before she got glasses, and even now she spends part of her day with one eye patched. Well yesterday Miss 2 had one of those issues addressed. She had a strabismus repair.

As the video explains it involves work on the muscular attachments to the eye. It also involves general anesthesia, breathing tubes, and IVs.

Dear Husband and I spent some time with Miss 2 getting her ready. She colored an “I want to be a nurse” coloring book provided by the hospital, and climbed into the crib-like hospital bed. When the doctor showed up, Miss 2 finally recognized someone and promptly handed her glasses over and told us she was ready. That left the real question of whether we were ready.

The anesthesiologist and nurses wheeled her away and the nurse told Dear Husband and I to go to the basement cafeteria and get something to eat. The procedure was only supposed to be an hour, the same amount of time as ballet, soccer, or dance. We have waited numerous one hour intervals before and we are both eminently capable of waiting one hour. My Dear Husband suggested we follow the nurses firm suggestion. She really just wanted to give us something to do, something familiar, like eating, while we waited.

So we ate. And we waited and we talked about television. Actually, about Stargate SG-1       (https://marenshouse.com/2012/02/1894/) in specific. And then we were done eating and sat next to an aquarium filled with carp. Every doctor’s office has an aquarium, it’s something familiar. Even if the carp were strange.

After forty-five minutes Miss 2’s doctor came back and said she was done. The procedure went well and she would see Miss 2 in a few days. We were taken to the recovery area, and a sleepy Miss 2 was wheeled in. She tried to sit up, muttering, “I’m not sleepy. I’m okay,” after which she promptly fell back asleep, snoring away. We held her, and gave her some apple juice whenever she opened her eyes. We wrapped her in her blanket so she could hold the graying icky tag she likes, and then we took her home.

She slept most of the day and then suddenly at dinner she pointed to the plate of lasagna and said, “I wants some of that.” So she ate lasagna and garlic bread. This morning she woke up early like she usually does and threw a fit at having to share the toys with her sister.  Regular stuff.

But this morning Miss 2 is not wearing her patch. There are no crazy colors covering one side of her glasses, and the sky is very sunny, something that has not happened for a few weeks.  We think her eye looks a little straighter, but it is too soon to tell.  With a surgery like this, you can’t know right away if it has been successful or not.

And so, we find ourselves . . . . . waiting.  Waiting for another eye doctor appointment. . . . waiting for a good result. . . . . Waiting.