Sophie's surgery

Early this morning we left Lydia in the care of Grandma Frazier while the rest of our family drove to Davis Surgical Center for Sophie's procedure.  About two months ago Sophie woke up with an incredible amount of discharge crusted around her eyes making her lashes stick together and resembling the dreaded pink eye that I became so familiar with while teaching. We sent a picture of her eyes to Dr. Bowman, our ophthalmologist neighbor and with his permission, started her on drops right away.

On closer inspection in person he let us know that pink eye was not the issue, but rather that she appeared to have plugged tear ducts.  That would explain the frequent stream of tears often escaping her eyes. Anyway, we met with him twice before scheduling the surgery and found out that this procedure is ideally done on babies ages 9 to 12 months of age.  If taken care of in that window the success rate is considerably higher than if performed any time after that, so there is the possibility of this recurring in Sophie, but we're hopeful that that won't be the case.  With any luck she'll no longer have to deal with tears pooling in the corners of her eyes and leaking down her cheeks.  We just thought Soph had weepy eyes; it never occurred to us that we should be talking to someone about a possible problem....

Last night we tried loading Sophie up with liquid, knowing that she couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight, but apparently we weren't completely successful.  She woke up at 12:30 and wanted a drink.  She often wakes up in the middle of the night and a drink does wonders in getting her to settle down again.  With a little more effort last night I got her back to sleep, but she was up again at 2:00 and Jon rocked her for a while and then brought her into bed with us.  She didn't fall asleep again until almost 5:00.  Poor girl.  Despite that, she was in a great mood for all the nurses, the anesthesiologist, and Dr. Bowman.  I'll admit that it was not my favorite watching the nurse take Sophie away, wondering how she'd respond to the anesthetic and how the surgery would go, but it went by much more quickly than I'd anticipated.  Jon and I were in the lobby trying to watch Lizzie on Good Morning America when Dr. Bowman approached us to say that Sophie had done great!  Her right tear duct had been narrow, but the left was completely blocked off... until now... and they shouldn't cause her any problems any longer.  We hope!  The nurses would come get us as soon as Sophie woke up.

When we went back to see her she was crying quite a bit, but settled down pretty quickly.  She gulped her apple juice and held on to her panda bear, a gift from the surgical center, and took it all like a champ. In fact, she's been her usual cheerful self all day long.  She did get a lengthy and much needed nap this afternoon, but after that she ran around with Lydia, begged to go play on the swing set and bravely went down the slide at the Elementary School all by herself, which was not the plan and ended poorly.  Despite landing on her stomach and getting the wind knocked out of her, she bounced right back and handled her fall incredibly well.  For all our little fighter has been through today, she truly is a champion!