Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Surgery again....

Today was another day that mom and dad dreaded for our baby girl. Surgery day....again.


When Danielle was in the NICU she began to have quite a bit of drainage out of her right and left eye. The left eye over time seemed to heal, the duct cleared. Well, the right eye has continued to be pretty icky. She constantly has bright green drainage coating her beautiful long eyelashes. I have suggested this to her Pediatrician several times and the eye doctor as well. Late this summer Danielle begun to have this drainage quite a bit more and each time it was cultured and determined to be strep. This isn't a good thing and when I notified Danielle's eye doctor in IC, we went right in for an exam and set up a surgery date.


Surgery was the last thing we wanted baby girl to go thru again. The worst part for mom and dad was the eye doctor telling us that they could have possibly done this procedure at the same time as her ear tubes....UGH, talk about feeling like bad parents.



Well today was the day, we knew she would be in great hands as Dr. Olson was also the doctor that did Dylan's laser eye surgery when he was in the NICU. We had been told by several doctors of Danielle's what a minimal procedure this would be. Dr. Olson went over a couple 'worse' case scenarios with us and we were praying those would not be the case. We arrived at UIHC bright and early this morning and Danielle was the happiest little thing even though she hadn't eaten for 12 hours. She is quite the trooper! The Anesthesiologist met with us, the eye doctor met with us and they took her back. At 45 minutes the procedure should have been done, at 1 hour and 15 minutes mom was a little concerned. Finally they came to tell us that she was in recovery. We went into the 2ND stage room and Dr. Olson came right in to give us the news. Well the first words out of his mouth were....


'Surgery went fine BUT I have to say your daughter is SO beautiful, she sure awed everyone in the OR today with her smile. We were just starting to put the mask on her to put her to sleep and she kept smiling at all of us and looking around and smiling more, I mean....how could we put her to sleep when she was smiling at all of us? So we waited until she got those smiles out, but she sure melted our hearts today.'
That literally melted mom and dad's heart too. That's our baby girl alright, the happiest princess in town :)

So surgery went okay. Dr. was a little frustrated because it didn't go as planned. The plan was to probe her duct and dilate it so it was open for drainage. Well as one of the 'not so likely things' he ran into. One of the 6 teeny tiny bones in the top of her nose, one was blocking the duct. So he moved it back into place, but then the probe wouldn't continue on like it should have. So as he mentioned, 'not so likely #2' he had to do, poke thru the teeny thin layer of tissue to find the remainder of the duct. Well he injected the dye and it didn't suction thru like it should have.


So what does this mean?....we don't really know. We need to give it time, at least a few months time. We will pray, pray every day that things will be fine for our little girl. All of the inflammation needs to heal and we will see what happens. If her eye gets goopy after the initial 'healing' is over then we will probably know. The doctor was honest, he felt horrible. He said this is the 1st time in probably 3 years that this has happened. He was frustrated, we know he is a good doctor, we trust him, he has really helped our children. So we will wait, if this isn't corrected, well then, we will need to talk about seeing a plastic surgeon. But for now that is a distant, very distant thought.
As we have learned as parents, the parents of preemie baby's and 2 miracle children, time is of the essence. We will continue to take each day as it comes, hope for a better tomorrow than the day was today and BELIEVE...we believe in our children and their strength. We will hope, we will pray and we will believe, in our children and the power of the lord.
We love you Danielle Marie~

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