As most of you know, Stevie had another eye surgery yesterday.  This was his 9th time under anesthesia.  The fourth eye surgery.  Three of those being on his eyelids.  Does he have 3 eyelids?? No, the first one just failed, so we had to do it again.  I have many, many grumpy faces and new frown lines from this.

I know I’ve talked about his eyes on the blog before, but just in case you’re new here, I’ll give a quick history.

Stevie was born with a condition called Bilateral Ptosis – or droopy eyelids (among other things).  Child didn’t even open his right eye until he was about a month old, and when he finally did, it was basically a tiny slit that didn’t allow his eyeball to be used much.  That caused the eye to go lazy, so when he was 6 months old, we got him glasses and started patching his eye to make it stronger.  But in the end, we had to correct the lazy eye with surgery.  And so begins the saga.

Eye Surgery #1: Lazy eye correction. No issues and it helped his vision a lot.
Eye Surgery #2: Right eyelid correction.  One of the stitches on his forehead got infected.  Then about a week after surgery, the eyelid fell and we were right back where we started.  No explanation, just happens sometimes. Of course, Stevie.
Eye Surgery #3: Left eyelid correction.  Holy traumatizing.  After we were home from surgery, his eye began bleeding in the middle of the night and didn’t stop for almost 18 hours. To give you a visual, it pretty much looked like his eye fell out because the blood was thick over his eyeball.  Other patients in the hospital would understandably gasp as we walked by. The doctor had never seen this before and nobody knows why it happened.  But (yes, there’s a but!!) we saw some big developmental leaps once it healed and he could see a little better!

Which brings us to today and a (successful) right eyelid correction.  We were supposed to do this right eyelid again last summer.  But after surgery #3… yikes.  I ended up canceling the surgery about a week beforehand, because I was simply not mentally or emotionally ready to go through another one.  I. could. not. do. it.  I had no idea that would put us another year behind schedule.  But it is what it is.

And on that note, I have to say, I don’t think I was much more mentally or emotionally ready this time just because we waited, but at least I had a little time to recover after the last one.

I AM JUST SO FREAKIN’ RELIEVED THESE ARE BEHIND US!
And he looks so great one day after surgery!!

We saw the doc today for a post-op exam and everyone was happy with the outcome.  So that’s what we like to hear.  We still have to hope that it stays this time, but so far, so good.  On to bigger and better things — and hopefully lots more developmental leaps!

And thank you, as always, to those of you who took the time to send us a little encouragement.  We love and appreciate it all!!