Ella's Eyes

I'm sort of working backwards here on the things that have been going on lately, so if something seems out of order, it's just kind of because my brain is working out of order.  Not that my brain IS out of order.  Wait a minute...

Anyway.

Ella had surgery on her eyes last week to correct the exotropia (outward drifting) that we were seeing.  The patching that we'd tried didn't work, and the drift had progressed to a point that her doctor wanted to go ahead and proceed with the surgery. 

It was an outpatient procedure, and didn't take long at all -- less than an hour -- but it was still pretty nervewracking for me.  I mean, it was surgery.  She had general anesthesia, an IV, was intubated -- the whole nine. 

Awesome surgery pajamas.  The pants kept falling off her.

I have to tell you, though.  This kid of ours is a trooper.  A serious trooper.

We had to be there at the ass-crack of dawn (6am), and of course, Ella couldn't eat any breakfast -- she didn't gripe or whine, though.  

She never cried through any of the pre-op stuff with a bunch of doctors and nurses she'd never met before.  She even had to do a neublizer before getting the anesthesia, and she did great with it. 

And she was pretty much back to her regular self that same evening. 

If it had been me?  I'd have needed a week off work -- at least -- to recover.  (Yes, I'm a wimp.  Shut up.)

The only real trouble we ran into was with the ointment that we had to put in her eyes twice a day for a week.  That was not a hit.  Eyelids, as I learned, can be very, very strong when they are squeezed closed.  However, a little bribery from Grandma did the trick, and she was fairly cooperative after that.  (Reward: her very own pink VTech computer.  Woo!)

We went back for her post-op check today, and the doctor said she's healing well, that and everything looks good. She goes back in six weeks for another check.