Aaron had eye surgery on Thursday, July 10th. Meri and I were a total wreck that day. Aaron was brave, as he always is. I posted the key events of the day on plurk.com and on twitter (via ping.fm on my VZW BlackBerry). All of my updates, via plurk.com, several hours before the surgery, leaving the house, out of surgery and sleeping in the recovery room, finally getting to see him, bringing him home, and finally, later that night, Aaron’s running a mild fever. Also, on twitter, a person (mgrossfl – Marc Grossman) that I only knew via twitter, expressed his concern throughout the next few days (via summize.com).

We arrived at the the Arnold Palmer hospital around 8am and registered and finally went to the surgery center. We spoke to Aaron’s ophthalmologist, then met the anesthesiologist and finally all of the nurses that would be helping during the surgery. They were all extremely nice.

The surgery itself lasted about an hour and went well, by the book according to the surgeon. Aaron was in the recovery room, sleeping for about 90 minutes after the surgery, in which time Meri and I patiently waited in the waiting room until we could finally go back and see him. When we got to see him, he was eating an orange popsicle that the nurses gave him.

We now have to give him eye drops three times every day, for three to five days post surgery. His first drops didn’t go so smoothly and it took 45 minutes to apply them! We are doing much better with the drops now; we stop them tomorrow.

Aaron’s eyes are red on the outer left portion. Over the next 3 weeks, they will become more red, possibly enveloping the entire eye, then turn yellowish and finally back to a normal white.

Now that the surgery is over, I’m finding the most difficult thing to do is wait for 4 – 6 weeks to know of the surgery was successful. According to the paperwork we were given, 70% of those who had the surgery only required it to be performed once. 30% needed multiple surgeries. Of those 30%, 20% needed one to two more surgeries and the final 10% needed 3 or more surgeries.

Needless to say, Meri, Aaron and I are hopeful that Aaron will be in the 70% range.

Not to be lost in all of this is Eli! He’s our now 4month old chunky baby (17lbs as of this writing!) who had to be cared for during the procedure. Thankfully, Meri’s aunt Paline was able to come down and help us out! We were very fortunate that she was able to come down on such short notice (she flew in EARLY Thursday morning, around 1am.

I’m ready to stop talking about this now, it has been difficult for all of us. Ready for some cuteness in this post, here it is. Aren’t my boys just so handsome?!

Tomorrow is the day that Meri and I have been dreading since Aaron’s diagnosis back in December 2007. He’s having his eye surgery. I’m not going to list all of the potential negative effects of the surgery because he is going to come out great and the surgery is going to go strictly by the book. There aren’t any negative effects to worry about. My son is a champion, he will get through this, even with his mom and dad sitting idly by with teary eyes. My son is the best son a father could ask for, he makes me feel like I’ve never felt before. I love him more than I ever thought I could love another person.

Aaron’s intermittent exotropia I discussed previously has been getting progressively worse. Meri and I have both been noticing that he is squinting more and more, even when he’s not outside in full sun and even when he’s wearing sunglasses.  Meri and I have had a bad feeling about what we both [pessimistically] thought would need to happen next.

Meri took him to the ophthalmologist again yesterday to have him re-examined (since it’s been 6 months since he was first diagnosed) The doctor is one of the best in the area (from what we’ve been told).  Meri works in an ER and has spoken with several opthamalogists that stroll through there and they recommend him (and more importantly, use him).

The doctor looked at Aaron’s eyes and told Meri that his condition was deteriorating. He told her that the only solution for Aaron’s case was to have the corrective surgery.  We knew this day was coming and have talked about what we should do next.  We’ve done a lot of research and have both anguished about this decision for a long time – we decided that Aaron should finally have the surgery.

I can’t speak for Meri, but I am not fearful that the doctor won’t do a good job and I am fully expecting that the surgery will be successful.  We are both very worried about Aaron having to be sedated for the surgery. Meri working in the medical for so long is both a blessing and a curse in that she knows a lot about what to expect.  Knowledge can be power but it can also be crippling, especially in the case of surgery for one of your kids.  While the surgery is not exactly necessary (in my understanding anyway), if successful, it would greatly improve Aaron’s quality of life.

So the surgery is scheduled for just under two weeks away (July 10th).  We have a pre-op appointment 7 days before the surgery so that we can hear about all of the details. Meri spoke briefly about recovery time and the doctur said that it would only be a few hours for Aaron, but he couldn’t go to the pool or play with sand for a week after the surgery.

Aaron had another ophthalmologist appointment yesterday. This was his second opinion that I talked about getting after our not so fun first doctors appointment.

This doctor’s office was much more kid-friendly. When they had to dilate Aaron’s eyes, rather than have my wife and an office tech hold him down (like the first ophthalmologist did), the office secretary, who is the doctor’s wife, sang to him and told him what was going to happen. At the first appointment, Aaron fought against having his eyes dilate because of the way it was done. After he came home, he told me how the lady and the doctor hurt his eyes. After this appointment, he didn’t say anything about any pain in his eyes.

Aside from that part of the appointment, I was put off by this doctor’s demeanor. I walked into the exam room about a minute after the doc began to explain treatment methods to Meri (according to her). As soon as I sat down, the doctor looked at me and said “I don’t have time to re-explain everything I just told your wife” and then continued where he left off.

WTF is with the pediatricians being total dickheads? Kiss my ass and take an extra minute out of your busy schedule to explain my son’s affliction because it’s kind of important to me. I know his eye isn’t hanging out of the socket or he’s not actively going blind but give me just one more minute. I’m sure my insurance will be charged like $300 or something ridiculous so quit bitching about how you can’t tell me what you just said and say it again. Hm, after reading that, I guess  bothered me a bit…

So the prognosis was good. We are doing eye exercises twice a day and wearing a patch on the stronger eye for two hours a day for the next three months. I hate to see him in the patch and he doesn’t like it but it’s better than the alternative. The idea is to make Aaron utilize the weak eye more so as to strengthen it. The eye exercises reinforce this idea as well. The doc said that Aaron had 20-20 vision despite this condition.

Tags: aaron, exotropia

Well, Aaron has intermittent exotropia. Meri called me from the ophthalmologists office while I was at work and I quickly GTFO of (left) work; I don’t even think I said much more to my project manager other than “can I leave!” (which was more of a statement than a question).

So the doctor said that Aaron definitely has this condition and that he wanted us to observe Aaron over the next four months. He also mentioned that he would NOT be aggressively treating condition. I got to the office right as Meri and Aaron were checking out so I wasn’t able to ask questions (and violently shake his shoulders and scream WHY THE FUCK NOT?!). We came home and found three other pediatric ophthalmologists in the Orlando area.