Ophthalmology

Bella had an ophthalmology appointment on Thursday afternoon. She woke up Thursday morning with relatively dry eyes, so I thought that her ophthalmologist might not recommend anything further. However, her doctor said that if that was a good day, then she definitely needed to have something done. Apparently clear basal tears mostly confined to her eyes, although great compared to her recent goopiness with caked eyelashes and water dripping down her face, is still not normal. At least I feel confident that she honestly does need a procedure, knowing that the doctor saw her on a good day and wasn't just judging her from an excessively goopy-eyed day.

Her Pediatric Ophthalmologist is referring us to an Oculoplastic Surgeon who will start out with a probing of the nasolacrimal ducts (like what she had done last June in Atlanta, but this time under general anesthesia) and if it doesn't appear to work as well as he'd like, then he will insert stents to drain the tears. The benefit of using this other doctor is that, if the stents are necessary, he will do that surgery under the same anesthesia, whereas her regular ophthalmologist would wait a few weeks after the probing before determining that stents might be necessary.

I'm not upset to hear that she is now too old to be able to hold her down and perform the probing in the office like they did in Atlanta. While we would all like to avoid anesthesia, I think this approach will be much more humane than strapping her to a board fully conscious and forcing her to watch as your come straight at her eye with a probe that you shove down her tear ducts to break the membranes blocking tear drainage.


Bella signing bear
The bear sign is supposed to be with arms crossed over the chest such that the hands are at the shoulders, but Bella crosses her arms down like this instead. It gets the point across.


Bella signing bird
To indicate many birds, Bella uses two hands. It's cute.


Bella signing elephant
ASL for elephant traces an imaginary trunk from your nose out-down-out with your hand, but using your arm as a trunk is more concrete and easier for babies to understand/remember. Besides, she loves to raise her "trunk" and trumpet like an elephant (or watch/hear me act it out).


Bella signing fish
Bella has learned Lola's name; she calls her "Lala." She thinks Lolo looks like Daddy and used to call him "Dada" as well. Now to differentiate between Daddy and Lolo, she says "La-dada" for Lolo (because he's the "daddy" that goes with Lola).


Bella so happy to read a book with Lola
Since Bella's ENT is contemplating a supraglottoplasty and possibly tubes in her ears, we will coordinate the procedures with both doctors so that Annabelle will only have to undergo general anesthesia once. Now that she will need anesthesia anyway, I'm less reticent to consent to another procedure and in fact might even call to get her next ENT consult moved earlier in order to combine everything. Plus, a doctor friend mentioned that if we are concerned that she might be having sleep apnea, then even though her oxygen saturation is 98%-100% during the day (we check it at most regular doctor visits because of her laryngomalacia), it might be dropping down to only 60% at night, which would not be good for her brain. So I'll talk to her regular pediatrician at her next check-up to see whether we need to take a pulse-ox monitor home. First, though, we'll wait to see when her Oculoplastic Surgery consult is scheduled.