Oh, My Soul Rejoice!: Eye Surgery

(Update on Levi's eye at the very bottom of this post)

Yesterday Levi had eye surgery to place a tube in his right tear duct. He's been having many eye infections due to his blocked tear duct. We did have it probed back in April but that didn't work. It ended up closing up again and getting what seemed to be worse. So, yesterday Mark and I took Levi to Children's Hospital for the procedure while my mom stayed with Lulu. I just have to say that Children's Hospital is one amazing hospital! What they do for kids and their families is incredible. Everyone we worked with was so caring.

We got checked in and Levi got to meet his nurse that would be with him into recovery. Everyone who works at Children's really has a heart for these children, you can tell just by how caring they are towards the entire family.

Levi was not enjoying getting his temperature taken. But then Daddy made a funny face and he was happy again.

Then we got his gown. He looked so cute in it.

What a cutie-pie! Ready for sugery. Here is Mark and Levi. We were in our own little waiting room waiting to meet with the doctor and the anesthesiologist to go over all the details.

Lots of kisses were given. Levi's nurse gave him a stuffed dog that got to go into surgery with him.

Mark was showing Levi all the fun gadgets in our room.....trying to keep busy. His surgery was at 8am and we had to be at the hospital at 6:45am.

While we were waiting, Levi fell asleep. The doctor came in and marked his right eye (that's the purple spot on his forehead) and talked with us about what she would be doing.

Then the anesthesiologist came in and went over what she would be doing and then left. Then about 10min later the anesthesiologist came back to take Levi in to the operating room. This was where we had to say goodbye. I had a few tears, but knew God was in control and protecting my little boy. Then Mark had a plan to distract me for the next hour by buying me a coffee at the snack bar. This actually took up a lot of time because once we sat to enjoy our coffee for a bit our pager went off. This meant that the procedure was done. Now we were just waiting for the second page which meant Levi was awake and we could see him! They told us it would be about 30min for him to wake up.......well, it was only about 10min until we got that second page. You should have seen me running, Mark was left in the dust (not really.) I was so excited to see Levi. We went back to our private waiting room and I was just chomping at the bit to get my hands on my little guy. We got to the room and the doctor came in to tell us how it went. I'm glad Mark was there because I couldn't concentrate on what she was saying....all I could think about was "we are here, the pager went off, where's Levi" and finally I hear him crying and the nurse brought him in. I scooped him up and started nursing him right away. He was very groggy and slept on me for quite a while. I was very happy to have him back in my arms nursing.

Here we are going home! We were told that we would be in recovery for about 4 hours so that meant we would be getting home around 1pm. Well, we were home by 10:30am!

Mark made the bed and got me water so that I could just crawl in bed and relax with Levi the rest of the day if needed. Well Levi had other plans. He was wide awake and ready to play. Here he is sitting on our bed playing with his new dog.

Here's Levi looking at his really cool band-aid that he got. That's where the IV was.

And of course he had to taste it.

Since Levi was feeling so good we all went out in the backyard and played. We are so thankful for all of this to be taken care of. You might notice Levi has socks on his hands. This is so he can't get his little fingers in his eyes. The doctor did tell us that sometimes kids can pull the tub out on their own. It's no big deal if this happens because it will just come right out but obviously we want the tube in there. It should be in there for 3 months. The tube is connected to Levi's upper tear duct in the upper eyelid and then goes into the lower tear duct in the lower lid. The tears will now drain down from the upper lid where they are produced into the lower one to drain into the nasal passage. We can see the clear tube in his eye, but it's very small so we have to look hard to find it. (Edited to add: Levi did end up getting his finger caught on the tube only 6 days after his surgery. He pulled it out about an inch. So it looked like he had a loop of fishing line hanging out of his eye. It was awful looking but didn't bother him. We had to tape the loop to the side of his nose. The next day his doctor at Children's Hospital had us come in so she could remove it. I was really upset about this. For all we went through to have it in for only 6 days. BUT! 6 days was enough because now it's 7 months later when I'm typing this and his eye is perfect. He has never had an infection since and it's healed just fine. Praise be to God!)