Eye Surgery Day 1

Today we began early having to be at the hospital by 5:30 for Jake's 7:00 am surgery. The goal was to operate on the muscles in Jake's eyes to attempt to get them to work together versus independently of one another. As mentioned previously, we were told it was a now or never proposition for Jake. Operate now and have a chance at saving the eye function otherwise the damage would be done and Jake's eyes would never work together. As a parent, it's never great to operate just to have a chance but as we have with all of Jake's medical care, we will do whatever's possible to give him the best shot in life.

Jake was surprisingly happy while we were waiting during admissions and then in the surgical wait room. They give Jake medicine that was designed to make him silly and drowsy so when we turned him over to the medical staff he wouldn't object. Jake acting a little drunk off the medicine was giggling away and entertaining us all in the waiting room. Once they brought Jake in, we went downstairs where we watched a little of the USA v Algeria World Cup match. This only increased the anxiety levels as the US missed what seemed like 20 chances in the box and went to the half tied up. At that point, we continued our wait with Sam's parents who generously joined us for added support. Before long Dr. Friedman gathered Sam and I to discuss the surgery. He did indicate that he found an unusual aberration in one of Jake's eyes where basically there were threads but no real eye muscle for him to work on and bring the eye lower down in an effort to line it up with his other eye. Interesting enough, Dr. Friedman relying on his 30+ years of surgery found that the other eye was pulled very tight by the muscle so he decided to try to loosen that muscle up and bring the lower eye up versus move the higher eye down. He hopes this solution will work and the brain will take over to keep the eyes aligned. We will see if this will work and as we mentioned this is probably a 50% chance that it will work. One other item to note is that prior to Jake's eye surgery he did not have any depth perception. This surgery may be able to fix that but again we are going to just have to wait and see.

Seeing Jake was an emotional roller coaster, our boy was thrashing about as he woke up from the anesthesia and it was tough to calm him down. He was disoriented and kept wanting Mommy then Daddy then Mommy then Daddy. After 15 minutes, Jake calmed down and we were able to relocate outside of the initial recovery area. There Jake fell into a deep slumber to which what we thought would be a few hours turned into an all day affair. Jake would sleep then wake up and throw up and this pattern repeated most of the day. An expected reaction to the drugs and the pain medication but not to the extent we thought. By 4 we decided to push for his release as he kept asking to go home. We made it home only to have Jake throw up some more after we tried to get him to eat a little food. He was lethargic but being home and around his brother and sister helped lift his spirits. We are a bit worried as he threw up again and we will have to take him to the ER if it happens one more time as instructed by his Dr. For now he is in bed sleeping so we hope he can rest it off and we can put this long day behind us.

One other thing to note, when we went to see Jake the USA was in the 88th minute tied up, it was later that I found out the USA found magic in stoppage time at the same juncture we were seeing Jake for the first time. A great moment all the way around.
Thank you all who reached out with their concern about Jake.