My poor little Belly. She's going to have eye surgery by the end of the year. She started having some crossing in her eyes when she was a few months old - not all the time, but enough that we took her to a pediatric ophthalmologist. That doctor was a total alarmist and suggested we submit our four-month-old to an MRI (which requires general anesthesia) and do surgery right away, etc. Two opinions and some eye patching later, we found a doctor we really liked. She put our baby in glasses and it was the cutest thing ever. See?

The glasses made a big difference... for awhile. After we moved to Portland, we knew it was time to take her for an eye check-up and noticed that there didn't seem to be any recent improvement with the crossing. We took her to OHSU where they have top-notch pediatric ophthalmologists. The doctor there suggested that her prescription had lessened so that she didn't need glasses anymore, and thus they were no longer effective in correcting the crossing. He said that he believed she was a surgical candidate. Once again we sought a second opinion. That second opinion guy ended up being a total tool and so I called her old doctor on the East coast. She gave me excellent advice and we went back to OHSU armed with a bunch of questions, all of which were answered "correctly." We finally felt confident that we were in good hands. 

As we've explored all of the options with her current doctor, it's obvious that surgery is the way to go. Of this I have no doubt. It's a simple outpatient surgery that should last 1.5-2 hours with an incredibly high success rate. She won't be in pain but will have red eyes and some mild irritation for two days. And then everything will be fixed. Easy, right? Well, I guess so. Except I know I'm going to have a very, very, very, very difficult time with this. The thought of letting them take my sedated toddler back to an operating room without me to knock her out completely before performing surgery on both of her eyes is more than a little daunting. They might need to give me a sedative, too. Ugh.

Expect to hear more on this as the date draws near (it's not scheduled yet but I know it will be in December). And feel free to send me any extra Xanax you have lying around the medicine cabinet.