Eye Surgery

As if having one boy in the hospital wasn't enough, we decided to make life extra crazy and schedule Beckett's eye surgery for April 29th.  It actually made the most sense to do it while my parents were still here so we could be at the hospital and Griff would be well taken care of. We had tried glasses for a few months and they didn't help at all so surgery was going to be needed to fix his lazy eyes.  I didn't realize this until the day before his surgery but apparently both of his eyes would turn inwards when he wasn't using them so both eyes needed to be fixed.  One of the main concerns with his eyes wasn't necessarily the lazy eye, but it was the vision he had lost in his right eye. Beckett had basically trained his brain to just use his left eye and because of this, his right eye had lost quite a bit of vision. The doctor had us patch Beckett's left eye for a few weeks before the surgery to strengthen the vision in the right eye as much as possible before surgery.  The first time he wore the patch was pretty traumatic.  Dr. Chen put the patch on in her office and Beckett immediately started crying and saying he couldn't see.  When we were leaving the office, Beckett wanted a sticker but couldn't tell what was on them.  I had to tell him what was on each sticker so he knew which one he wanted.  That's when I started to cry.  I was thinking that patching was going to be awful but after the first few days, it really wasn't an issue at all.  I was amazed at how quickly his vision seemed to improve.  He didn't mind wearing the patch and would even remind us to put it on him if we forgot.  Here's a picture with his patch on.

Beckett is pretty weird about hospitals so I was anxious to see how his surgery was going to go.  He actually handled everything really well though.  He watched TV and played with Tagg's iPad before the surgery.  They gave him some stuff to drink that would make him a little loopy and tired.  It didn't seem to be working for a while but then a few minutes before they took him back I could tell he was getting tired.

They told us to bring a blanket and stuffed animal with us if it would make him more comfortable.  I'm glad we did because it was a good distraction for him.  They had him get in the bed and the nurses put his dog on his head as they rolled him away.  He thought it was pretty funny.  

The next time we saw him, he looked like this.  He still hadn't woken up from the anesthesia but his face looked so sad.

They warned us that when he woke up, he might be a little angry. Little was an understatement.  He woke up crying and yelling and saying that his stomach hurt.  He ended up throwing up a little.

After that he went back to sleep. They wouldn't let us leave until he could eat or drink something without throwing up.  I woke him up a few times to have him take a drink so we could leave.

Eventually they let us leave, but as soon as we got home, Beckett threw up.  The rest of the afternoon he pretty much just slept.

He ended up throwing up again that night but slept well through the rest of the night without any problems.  The next morning, he threw up a ton!  I didn't realize it would be worse the day after but apparently that's pretty common with kids recovering from anesthesia.  He threw up probably 10 times that morning. After his nap he was pretty much back to normal.  He was never in much pain from his surgery which I was grateful for.  He did have these awesome devil eyes though. You can sort of see in this picture but the inside of his eyes were super red.  It was pretty creepy and hard for me to look at the first few days.

We go back to the eye doctor in a few weeks to see if we still need to do more patching or if his vision is back to where it should be after the surgery. Hopefully we'll get good news!