It has been 6 months in coming, but Harper finally had her eye surgery. It started in November when we discovered the problem. She saw two doctors in December who diagnosed her with Amblyopia, or lazy eye in her right eye. It is a problem with the muscle on the inside of her eye that pulls her eye too much so that it gets stuck and can't come back out. We did patching and glasses and although they helped, they were not a full solution as her eyes still crosse and her brain was still trying to not use the eye as much. As her brain stopped using the eye, it got more and more lazy and her 3D vision started to deteriorate. So we scheduled surgery. But it got cancelled due to a change in insurance, which made us start all over with a new ophthalmologist. We ended up going to Children's Hospital in Dallas and seeing someone there who scheduled her for surgery the next week. They will go in through the bottom of her eyeball and cut the interior muscle of both eyes to make sure both work perfectly. It should be quick and have no scars. Plus, she should be back to normal after a day or so.
We had to be at the surgery center at 6:30am so we were up at 4:30. Paige ate and went back to sleep the whole way but Harper just sat in her car seat and relaxed the whole drive. We waited in a pre-op room for about 2 hours, watching cartoons, meeting drs and nurses, and getting everything ready. She was pretty shy and nervous so she wasn't enjoying all the attention. The only thing that was making her happy was laying by Paige. Eventually they gave her the "giggle juice" or liquid valium, and she relaxed considerably (she didn't like it at first though and spit most of it back out onto her hair - yuck). Since she was much more compellable, she finally put on the nightgown and talked to the nurses some. I asked her how she was feeling and she ended up singing "I wanna Rock and Roll" for me. It definitely worked. We prayed over her and she went into the operating room around 9. As she was wheeled away, she was sobbing crying out "Mama" so it was a little rough for me. But I just knew that we had prayed for this surgery for months and that God was with us.
We went to a small waiting area and fed Paige and just hung out until she was done about 10am. When we got back to her post-op room, they said she would be in when she woke up from the anesthesia anywhere from 20-45 minutes. While we were waiting her surgeon came in and said it was a perfect surgery and he was hopeful that she would be completely healed. Such great news! She was in within 15 minutes though still quite a bit groggy. She immediately cried and wanted to be held, so I picked her up and we sat and rocked. She had a sip of water, got her iv out, and relaxed for a bit. After about 30 minutes, she was so much better, more alert, not in too much pain, and ready to go. So we got discharged and headed out before 11am. It was so nice to be home early and have naps waiting.
Harper slept the entire way home and Paige slept for half of it. When we got home, we thought Harper would just want to go back to bed, but she was rested and didn't want to. She was kind of grumpy, so we just let her do whatever she wanted for the day. She laid on the couch and watched Disney for hours and seemed completely content. Paige ate and took her nap for the afternoon. And eventually Cody and I fell asleep as well. It was a nice, quiet day. Cody said that we should have known Harper hated naps enough that not even valium and general anesthesia would keep her down.
We got dinner from Patti Cornelius (Cody's coworker) and the Spiegel's brought Harper a new toy. We also got dinner the next night from the Piazza's and a visit from Aunt TayTay, present included, so it was a great day. We are so blessed with our friends and family! As the day progressed, we kept family and friends updated and asked for prayers for peace, for the surgery, for her recovery, for her grogginess. And I'm so thankful to say that God heard those prayers and seemed to answer them all almost immediately. We were covered in prayer and were so thankful that God was with us the whole time.
Her eyes are red on the inside because of the surgery but not as bad as we had imagined. They are almost unnoticeable unless she looks way to the side. She was fussy that day and then didn't sleep well that night, thus having a very hard day the next day. But day 2 after the surgery she was fully back to normal and a happy little girl. She had a little double vision, blurriness, itchy eyes, and sticky lashes the first day after, but that was all gone by day 2 as well. We are so incredibly thankful that God protected her and has helped her to recover so quickly. We had her post-op appointment later in the week to verify that she had no infections and her eye swelling was going down. The doctor gave her the thumbs up and said she was doing great. And then hopefully we will see improvement in her eyes in about a month or so. All we are looking for now is that her brain begins to use her eye 100% again. Since she did so good and was such a crazy good kid during all this mess, we took her to Braum's for late night ice cream after her post-op appointment. She loved it!
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