Little Oaklyn's Eye Pt. 2

A while back I opened up on this blog about Oaklyn's eye.

It was actually much harder for me to do than you'd think.

I'm incredibly protective over my Oaklyn, and I struggled with the fact that other people were starting to notice there was something different about her eye.

To me, she's perfect. 

She's a beautiful little girl with the cutest and sassiest personality and I couldn't stand it when I received rude comments or messages about her eye.

I struggled with it for a while so I finally just decided to open up about it.

You can read more about it right here, but long story short is that she was born with something called Brown's syndrome and we tried all we could to fix it without surgery... but ultimately she ended up needing surgery.

That's actually the update I wanted to share about for those of you that have been asking how it all went.

There's good, bad, and hopeful news... so bare with me as I share it.

The day we scheduled Oaklyn's surgery I literally felt like I was going to throw up.

I know that little kids and even babies go in for surgeries all the time but it just about broke my heart into a million pieces even thinking about it.

We had a couple of weeks to prepare but since we had never done the surgery before, I didn't even really know what to prepare for.

We went to the surgical center that morning and my sweet baby was hungry.

She had to fast, like you do with any surgery, and we had to wait longer than expected.

They finally called us back and we got her dressed in the little hospital gown and socks and I had to hold back the tears.

I've never seen someone make a hospital gown look so cute though ;)

We waited to speak with the anesthesiologist and the doctor while Oaklyn played with toys having no idea what was going to happen.

They were both friendly but my anxiety about the whole thing was still through the roof.

After talking to both of them, a nurse came in, picked Oaklyn up, and just walked away with her.

That's when I lost it.

I totally get that they didn't want her to be scared and crying that mommy and daddy were leaving her and they obviously didn't want us back there while putting her under, but man it was so hard just walking away from her.

All I could think about was her terrified wanting mama and dada.

I couldn't sit in the waiting room because I was a hot mess and bawling the entire time we waited. 

After about an hour, though, I knew the doctor would be coming out soon so I pulled myself together and went in.

The doctor came and talked to us and said everything went well and the surgery was successful.

He gave us a few brief instructions and told us she'd be waking up soon and they'd come get us when she did.

Those few minutes between the time the doctor came and talked to us and when they actually called us back felt like forever.

Right as they said "family of Oaklyn" Hunter shot up and practically ran to the door. I waddled behind because well... pregnant.

Oaklyn waking up for anesthesia was pretty funny, and also really not.

She was acting drunk and her body was flopping all over the place and she asked if she could go to Walmart, ha!

The nurses wanted to give her medicine but she couldn't have it unless she ate.

Getting her to eat and not touch her eye was an actual nightmare but we survived and about 2 hours later were able to go home.

From there, she was such a champ with recovery.

Her eye was pretty red and swollen for a few days and it wasn't exactly easy telling her not to touch it, but man did she impress us.

She hardly whined, took her medicine, and slept great.

I watched it closely each day and kept hoping it was starting to look better.

The swelling was going down and the redness was fading but inside, I just knew her eye didn't look better...

Her post op was about 10 days after the operation.

At that point the doctor was able to determine what our next step was.

I had been praying that our next step would just be to go home and call it good because the operation fixed it, but I couldn't help but feel that wasn't the case.

Oaks was the most cooperative she had ever been at this appointment and he was able to run several tests. 

He finally told me that the Brown's syndrome was in fact fixed, aka the good news.

However, the way her body chose to recover from the surgery created a different problem... aka the bad news.

With this surgery, they put a spacer in between the tendon behind her eye. 

That allowed the tendon a little more flexibility so it can move more freely which fixes the initial problem.

However, her body gets to choose how it responds to that... either it figures it out and all is well, or it can't figure it out and has a hard time adjusting.

Unfortunately, her body chose the latter.

The doctor let us know there is definitely a possibility of another surgery in the future to correct this.

However, here comes the hopeful part...

He let us know that he wants us to patch the strong eye for 2 hours a day to make the other eye work harder at figuring out how to work with the spacer.

So, there is definitely hope that the patch will work this time.

We've been doing it each night and Oaklyn has been awesome.

Sometimes it takes some convincing, and sometimes she peels it off early, but she's doing much better than we thought she would. 

Honestly, I really have noticed an improvement!

We have about two more weeks of patching and we'll see what the doctor says, but from what I've seen, I think it is helping.

I'm choosing to be hopeful and optimistic, but also to remember that surgery again is still a possibility... and that is okay.

If that's what needs to happen to help her, then that's what'll happen.

Anyways, I know that was long, but I've gotten a lot of questions and I figured I might as well just write it all out.

So, if you want to keep our little girl in your prayers and thoughts, we would very much appreciate it.

All my love,

Aleigh Joy