Surgery #5!



gearing up in pre-op

 Riley has been wearing glasses since he was two to try to correct his out turning left eye.  More scientific terms his Exotropia.  We've been seeing the eye Dr. every six months since then and then last May he cleared him for a year checkup but we didn't make it that long.  Back in December I started to notice that his eye was turning outward again and then it gradually became worse and worse to the point that it was turn out most of the time even with his glasses on.  We got into the Dr. in February and he told us it was time to surgically correct the eye before he started to lose vision.  He assured us it was a very simple procedure but the downside is that it's only 70% effective and if you have any underlying neurologic defect i.e. a neuromuscular disease then it drops the percentage to 50-60% and if it doesn't work then there are other procedures we can consider.  Well we decided to book the surgery.  As luck would have it Riley decides to get sick (reference previous post) a couple weeks before the surgery.  Thankfully he made a speedy recovery because I had already scheduled the time off work and his eye was so bad that I didn't want him to have to wait any longer.  The surgery went well but instead of one eye he had to correct both eyes.  He explained that if the good eye has compensated for the bad one for so long then the good eye muscles start to get too tight and cause problems so he had to fix the muscles in both eyes.  After he came and spoke with us when he was finished we sat and waited forever to go back to recovery.  Finally after another half hour Marc went back.  The Anesthesiologist said that he wouldn't wake up so he had to keep the breathing tube in longer until he woke up and then he woke up screaming so they gave him some Fentanyl to calm him down.  Well it worked a little too well and we waited another 2 hours in the PACU for him to wake up enough to take him home. 

Serioulsy the saddest picture.  I thought for sure he would end up with black eyes. What a trooper!

We are now three weeks out and will see the Dr. next week for a post op. We're crossing our fingers that the surgery will be effective and he won't need any more interventions other than glasses.

almost made it

Despite our best efforts to remain bug free this winter Riley finally caught one, the Rhino bug. It started out with a high fever and really crappy oxgyen saturations which led to a weekend insta care trip, chest xray and some antibiotics. Once the antibiotics kicked in the fever disapated and he seemed to be doing much better and then bam about a week later he got super junky and needed lots and lots of suctioning.  The secretions were way too thick and beyond my home capabilities so we decided to take him to the ER.  With increased bipap settings and treatments every 2 hours we landed an ICU bed.  After a few days he was able to wean back down to his home bipap settings and treatments went to every 3 hours so he was moved to the floor.  As much as I don't like being in the ICU I really don't like the floor only because it takes the Respiratory Therapists forever to come and get anything done.  I feel like I end up doing most of the work so what's the point of even being there.  He still was not tolerating being off his bipap so we had to wean slowly.  Our goal is usually 2 hour break off bipap and 4 hour treatments and then we're good to go home. 

So we hung out.  Read lots of books and watched lots of movies and ate lots of frozen yogurt from the cafeteria. I love the frozen yogurt machine.

After a bath all they had was this BIG kid gown it covered him from head to toe!



After a week of being in the hospital I think Riley was ready to go home because we woke up to this face

Alrighty then I guess you're ready to go home...Love this kid and his strong will :)