Update and Reflection, I guess

So, a word about our Geri and the surgery-that-wasn't. Because it wasn't. We went up to Denver, got her settled in at the hospital, then brought her to the OR for the gas and headed down to the cafe for lunch together. I've been joking for weeks that the anesthesiologist is our babysitter and we were finally getting a date. Well, the date was about 30 minutes long. We had just eaten some lunch (it was yummy) and we were discussing seconds when my cell phone rang. It was the surgeon. I have to be honest, my first thought was "What the heck are you doing? Get back in the OR!! You are supposed to be BUSY!!"

He told me that he was done. When he performed the exam under anesthesia (EUA) on her eyes, the pressure in her left eye was normal! He can't justify operating on an eye with normal pressures, so he completed the exam and called it good.

"Ummmm... what? Seriously?" Yes, seriously.

When Geri had the surgery on her right eye, you might remember that she also had a laser procedure on her left. In that procedure, they basically killed off half of the gland that produces fluid in the eye. That, coupled with her drops, reduced the production to basically zero. But here's the crazy part... fluid has been escaping the eye! I mean, that's the only way the pressure could possibly go down. I keep thinking of blowing up a balloon. If you stop, the ballon stays the same. If you want the pressure in the balloon to go down, you have to open up a hole and let the air out. Well, somewhere in Geri's left eye there's a bit of drainage because the fluid has gotten out. But this is the eye that has had higher pressures all along. The eye that is more distorted. The eye that was "worse." How on Earth can the "bad"eye suddenly start draining after 4 years??? One word... God.

During the exam he also found that her right eye has decreased in circumference by 1mm. We thought it looked smaller, but here's proof. Wow. God is good.

So now the plan is another EUA in 6 weeks, at which point he'll check the pressure in the left eye again and proceed with surgery if it's gone back up. It will go back up at some point, since the laser procedure is only effective for about 6 months and then that section of gland will be in production again. Surgery is going to happen, but not right now.

I'm grateful, in a way, but also too stunned and confused to fully process my gratefulness. It's nice that she gets a longer break between surgeries. It's more time to become attached to us. More time to adapt to her surroundings. More time to gain weight and figure out what caused that seizure and such. More time for us to accumulate money for medical expenses. Yet, the knowledge that we're only on a temporary reprieve makes that reprieve feel almost pointless. I know God is up to something, but what? I have to wait and see.

In the meantime, she's stopped taking naps again and her night-time wakings ramped back up. Which is why I'm sharing the below from a blog I just saw today for the first time, bogueandweejer. Enjoy!

"And I know the exhaustion is just a phase and soon, they'll be in elementary school and I'll miss them terribly during the day. And then they'll be in middle school and too cool to hug me in front of their friends. And then high school when we're fighting all the time and I'm grounding them from their holographic games and hover craft. And then they'll head to college and we'll be like WOO HOOOO!!!! Except we'll really really miss them and look through baby pictures and not even think once about or even remember the "hard" days."