Ptosis

First let me start this by saying that I KNOW I shouldn’t be so upset about something that is NOT life threatening for our little Maggie. I get that. BUT at the same time its very hard to think that ANYTHING is “wrong” with your baby!

When Maggie was born, both Yosh and I noticed that her left eye wasn’t opening like her right…

The pediatrician who came in and checked on her each day we were in the hospital told us that her eye was ok…and probably had some swelling due to trauma during delivery.

Both Yosh and I weren’t convinced.

When we got her home we continued to watch her left eye struggle.

Sometimes it looked GREAT…other times, not so great.

So we decided to google lazy eye.

I think everyone knows this already but DON’T GOOGLE! It gives the worst case scenarios and freaks you the HELL OUT!  I noticed Yosh’s attitude and mood change after reading.  He grew so sad about our poor little girl and what could possibly be wrong.  But we knew…we both knew without needing a doctor to diagnose anything, that Maggie had ptosis.  Basically ptosis is drooping of the eyelid.  There are different severities of it that require different treatments BUT basically if the eyelid effects vision, surgery is performed before the brain doesn’t develop properly!  We also figured it out because one of Yosh’s brothers was born with ptosis and had corrective surgery when he was 3 years old. 
Well the day we were doing our “at home research” must have been the same day my hormones were flushing. I could NOT stop crying!! Every time I looked at her, or looked at Yosh I would break down.  I didn’t want ANYTHING wrong with Maggie.   I didn’t want to think about her brain not developing properly, or her having to have surgery, or us having to patch her good eye and have a little toddler with a patch on! Ugh.  It was all so devastating.

So we had our day of crying and dealing. When we went into Maggie’s 2 week check-up and our pediatrician had no doubt it was ptosis and then referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist, we knew that was coming but I was bummed because the earliest appt was for NOVEMBER 9th…a month away!  And I wanted a specialist to see her ASAP…google says early detection and treatment was very important to prevent long term issues.

Once we knew forsure there was something wrong I decided to let social media know…I didn’t want people to be noticing her eye and wondering if WE had noticed her eye.  Get the elephant out of the room immediately. We knew her eye looked different and were taking care of it.  And I’m very happy I did…I have a friend in scheduling at Kaiser and she was able to get Maggie in to see the preferred doc and MUCH sooner than our original appt!

On Oct. 15th we got to see Dr. Duerksen.

I was nervous that I was going to cry whenever he told me something was wrong….something we wouldn’t be able to fix.

But the appointment was great.  Dr. Duerksen was very positive.  He said that Maggie’s ptosis wasn’t too bad….yet.  He gave me more information and I was happy with all of it.  Basically her ptosis could either a) get better and her outgrown it, b) get worse and need immediate surgery or c) stay the same. 

He checked her eyes out by dilating them and checking for stigmatisms and other issues.  Everything came back normal for her age.  But we will be seeing Dr. Duerksen every few months for the next 2 years.  If at any time her lid drops below her pupil we’ll have surgery to sling it up.  If at any time she develops a ‘chin-lift’ (tilting of her chin to be able to see under her lid), then we’d have immediate surgery to sling it up.  If at any time her vision becomes impaired, we’ll have a surgery.  BUT other than that she’ll be ok…and we’ll hope and pray that this resolves itself.

First eye appt…weird seeing such a little baby in this room.  

If we hadn’t already had our day of crying and dealing, this appt wouldn’t have been so positive to me. But I’m happy that my little baby didn’t need surgery right away…and that there WAS hope that she could possibly live a normal life without surgical intervention.

The other day I was looking at my little lady and realized…her eye is seriously getting better and better every day!! So Happy about that!

So now we wait…and watch.  And hope that she is one of the few that outgrow ptosis!!  BUT if she doesn’t..thats ok too. Shes gorgeous the way she is!!