Surgeries

Nothing recent, lucky for us but over the years, Emily had 3 surgeries.

Two for her eyes and one to control her drooling.

Emily has beautiful eyes

When Emily was little, she had a lazy eye (strabismus)

We patched her strong eye in the hope to reinforce her weak eye for aesthetic of course but mostly because Emily’s brain only uses one eye at the time.  We were worried her brain would eventually stop using her right eye which could have meant that eventually Emily could lose her eye.

You are closing one of your eyes right now and slowly realizing that Emily doesn’t have 3D vision.

This no 3D vision combined with her mobility issues will forever create challenges for Emily as a change in color or texture on the floor could be a step.  Whenever we are somewhere new, you can see Emily moving slowly and feeling ahead with her foot to confirm if it’s flat or if it is a step.

Back to her surgeries, the patch didn’t do much for her other than upset her so the surgeries were mentioned.

After asking for a second that said to put glasses on her, we got a third opinion, who said the surgery would be better so we agreed on the eye surgery.

Emily had her first eye surgery in Montreal when she was 4.  We knew when we went in for her first surgery that she would need a second one.  The first one loosen up some eye muscles while the second one tightened the other muscles.  The surgeries were on both of her eyes and corrected the strabismus and her “V” syndrome (where she used mostly the top of her eyes)

Emily recovered nicely from the first surgery and a couple of years later, she had her second surgery in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  She recovered really nicely once again and today, her eyes are straight unless she’s exhausted.

And against all odds, I believe that sometimes, she uses both of her eyes together, this is mostly for table work and the black 3d glasses that were only at Disney awhile back but are now in theaters everywhere seem to also work for Emily.

This takes us to Emily’s third surgery when she was 7 or 8.

By that time, Emily was a drool machine.  She always struggled with drooling and it got worst as she got older.  In first and second grade, other kids react to that one kid who is always wet, wiped her mouth on her clothes and have a chin that is always irritated.  Emily started to be self-conscious so we consulted and decided to go with another surgery.

Emily had her tonsils removed, some of her saliva ducts relocated lower in her throat and some of her saliva glands in her mouth burned.

She, once again, recovered quickly!  She is quite a trooper!

Look at my girl, no more drooling and gorgeous eyes!

Surgeries are not for everybody and we didn’t chose to go that way easily.  We looked  at options and weighted the pros and cons.  In our case, these were worth it!

A to Z Challenge 2016 – Lessons from my Daughter (PR) #800

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