Jeepers Creepers - An update on Sully's Peepers

(Stole this from Mom's blog - Precious huh?)

I am so sorry that I forgot to post this much earlier. Please forgive me. 8 )

As you know, Sullivan has regular eye exams scheduled every 3 months with Dr. Joos. These exams, for an adult, would normally be all that are necessary to check the status of the glaucoma. However, because Sullivan is little and squirmy, we have to schedule an EUA (exam under anesthesia) after every other visit. An EUA allows Dr. Joos to do all the tests and measuring she needs to do to make sure we have healthy eyeballs. We will do this about every 4 or 5 months until he is old enough to sit still in the exam room. Dr. Joos says they are pretty bribe able around 3. 8 )

The plan of action with these exams is always the same; if the glaucoma is presenting active symptoms then Dr. Joos will perform a surgery to install an implant in the eye, one at a time, to control the pressure. It is kind of like a pressure valve. Basically, they perform the exam and come and report to us what they found. If it is good news we go to the recovery room and wake up our precious baby to go home, if it is bad news they go back and perform the surgery while he is out. Due to the nature of the disease you never really know what to expect.

A couple days after we returned from California we had an EUA scheduled for Sullivan. While I was gone I had to stop the drops we were administering to Sullivan's left eye twice a day in order to get an accurate reading of the health of that eye. I was so nervous doing that. Sometimes having something to do helps you feel like you are in control but the truth is that we are not in control, He is. So I asked God to take my fear and to continually remind me to release Sullivan to Him. He is the one person in this world who loves him more than I do so those hands are more qualified anyway.

Thankfully as you have already read, Paige was there to sit with me and help me out. She was great to have along because she is really supportive and positive. Thank you Paigee!
Tyson would have been there but we have spent just about all of his vacation hours on Sullivan's prior surgeries. We both had a good feeling about the outcome so he decided to sit this one out. To be honest, if this is going to be our routine until he is 3 I really need to get used to going alone.
Sullivan did great. It was different this time because as he is getting older he is getting wiser too. He is starting to get a bit of separation anxiety and knows something fishy is going on. He didn't like the little sensor that they put on his toe or getting his temp taken but he did okay. The nurses said that around 1 year is when they start having to give "Pre-Meds" to them to calm them down prior to surgery. We'll see. It was early morning so he didn't have to go hungry for too long and once you give him a cute nurse to flirt with gets preoccupied. 8 )

After about an hour and 15 Dr. Joos and her assistant came back to tell us that Sullivan's eyes are doing great and that we can take him off of all meds. Soooooo Awesome!!!! His optical nerves look healthy and the left eye is slightly less far sighted than the right which means that when his eyes are fully developed he may be slightly nearsighted in that eye.

Soooo, at this point we have no symptoms of glaucoma! Yeah!