Madison's Surgeries

Most people know about Madison’s surgeries in May of 2009 but for the benefit of those who I haven’t kept in close contact with during the last year, I thought I should write about it. It all started in November of 08 (The year from you know where, that we hope to never re-live) I started noticing that Madison was getting extremely close to books to look at them and she was bumping into things a lot. She hadn’t had her eyes checked since she was a baby so I took her in for a long overdo eye appointment. Sure enough my suspicions were validated that Madison had cataracts in both eyes. The Dr. even let me look through his instrument at both Madison’s eyes and Kaitlyn’s eyes to see the difference.

The reason we hadn’t caught it before was because the cataract did not cover the whole eye. It looked like the cataract was swirled with some places being affected and other parts were clear. Madison was doing a good job at compensating the parts she couldn’t see with the few holes that she could see through. The next step was off to Primary Childrens. Usually they like to wait three weeks to a month in between eyes so that there is less of a chance of passing on an infection but after the whole insurance fiasco and having to reschedule the surgeries, my job that I had to fight so hard to keep (another long, not so humorous at the time story) was quickly coming to an end. We had the surgeries one week apart!

The day of the first surgery we were able to meet with a life specialist who let Madison color on a doll and smell the different scents that the medicine came in. I thought it was nice that the Curious George (G-George) was able to get a wrist band as well and go with Madison. When it was time to go Madison was wheeled off in a wagon. Everything went as good as it possibly could. When we got to see her she of course had her G-George and she was quite attached to a sippie cup of juice. They have these awful sleeves they can put on the children so they can not bend their elbows, but the nurse was able to figure out as long as Madison was occupied drinking that she would leave her eye alone. Then the drama began of having to do the awful eye drops every few hours. Talk about child abuse. We would have to sit on Madison, pry her eyes open and put the drops in. Instead of having to wear the patch all the time the Dr. gave us permission to let Madison wear sun glasses. We got a few interesting looks as we walk into church and our child is wearing sun glasses in the building.

The second surgery also went really well. I was shocked that Madison was willing to separate from us even after having the last surgery being so recent. While Madison was in the recovery room they had a music therapist go around to the different children and play her guitar and sing to them. It was very soothing and it helped Madison from being so agitated and trying to pull her IV out. A few months ago we had a guy come into Early Head Start to have a look around because it is such a new program. I overheard him talking about how his wife was part of the music therapy program that they were implementing at Primary Childrens. I was able to talk with the guy and tell him what an impact that had on our experience there. Although the circumstances were definitely not pleasant, I was very impressed with our experience with the Doctors and with the hospital!