From my experience, having to be faced with surgery is daunting for yourself, but what about for your own child? So many emotions you go through, as a parent it is such an unusual, sureal experience, because you can't do anything for them, but leave them in the hands of an
almost stranger.
When my son Codi was born, it was a healthy delivery of just two and a half hours. His score was a nine out of ten on the apghar test. He did have cross eyes, but usually this goes away after three months. However, Codi's eyes started to not go in unison and his brain was only choosing to use his right eye. Apprently, because his eye muscles were too strong and it was easier to use one. Luckily, we knew someone in the medical field that could send us to a well known specialist to advise us on what to do with his eyes.
To start with we were pleased to hear all we had to do was patch the lazy eye (or known as a squint, medically termed strabismus), which was his left. The issue for me was that I wanted to know what caused extreme lazy left eye Codi had. Also, if we didn't patch his right eye to encourage his left eye to work, his brain would gradually choose only one eye indefinitely to see through. This was all a lot to take on at the time, however, one thing we did learn was that this type of thing runs in families. His Auntie did have a lazy eye as a child but nothing to the extreme that Codi had it.
I thought back to my experience with delivering Codi. There was one point where he was getting distressed in the birth canal, where I was feeling really nauseas after (I think) drawing too much of the gas. Surely, this was to have some effect with the brain being starved of oxygen? Apparently, a friend of mine mentioned that Cerebal Palsy babies also get the lazy or strabismus condition with emergency births, but his distress wasn't that major. Still, there doesn't seem to be any real defined answer to the cause of strabismus.
Also, I do remember early on putting a toy above his head on the bar of his capsule, he would just stare at it and he also started to do a fish face when concentrating, such as swimming, which in hindsight should have encouraged that out of him, as it looked like he was concentrating and trying to go a cross eyed, like the party trick.
After patching for some months, it was difficult to know what would be next. Obviously, some part of your head is in the sand, hopefully thinking he was cured. Luckily my husband had his eyes open more than mine and confessed, that, whilst Codi had made progress, ie. not chosing the left eye permanently anymore he was now really smart and choosing the left eye to look left and then choosing the right to look right.
The decision came to discuss surgery. Eye surgery on a little baby of a tender ten months! I don't think my husband took it very well, but for some reason this decision really helped in the sense that I could now do something more for Codi. It was only going to be a day surgery stint, with the procedure only taking fifteen minutes. I was amazed. I really didn't want Codi to experience double vision, gees how would he play footy, run, catch fast balls in the air? My mind spun, far, far into the future. From my experience, I felt that it was something we had to do for Codi. I was all for the surgery and it was booked in for that Monday.
I am glad I took the plunge to have his eye surgery. I felt so much better that I knew what I was dealing with and I knew in my gut, that this was the best thing for Codi. It was hard for my husband to deal with, as we had to manage Codi's pain and him not wanting to open his eyes for a week. However, from my experience having the corrective surgery early before they really could panic about it, seem to make it favorable to go ahead. At ten months, Codi was amazing in his ability to handle what he went through. I remember the tears in my eyes when I left him as he went under that day, but also remembering that week just how well he coped.
Now ten months later, his eyes are almost perfect. They move in unison. After his surgery, he began to cruise and walk by the time he was eleven months!!! The only thing now, is that we are still patching his left eye, to encourage it not to look up more than the other. The good news is now that after his patch comes of in the morning after an hour of being on, he wants to go in his swing. Which I swear, he is using to work out how to adjust his eyes and not see double vision, as the swing goes up and down. I see him do it. It is very exciting!!!
So, the specialist now says to patch for a further three months, an hour a day and then three months without the patch (re-patching if the lazy upturned eye re-occurs), but I am hopeful that Codi will only need one mini minor surgery to his left eye, later on down the track and with it being less of a major thing.
Anyone experiencing this type of thing with their own child, from my experience it was easy to hope that it will go away by itself and convince yourself that it wasn't so bad, but I really feel from my experience facing it (which was really, really hard to start with) and really thinking about what it would be like in my son's shoes, was the best thing I could have ever done. For a time there I tried to pretend it didn't exist.
(March 2006) (
