Update on Ethan's crazy eyes!!!

I can't believe it's been a year since Ethan had his surgeries. My little guy was only seven months old and had to have a couple of surgeries done. I was going through pictures and found these to show you the difference. Thank goodness for technology and the amazing things that doctors can do. Ethan had monocular elevation deficiency (MED) in his right eye (so his left when you are looking at the picture)....meaning he couldn't look up with it. They thought that his muscle was probably just tight, so they were planning on going in, stretching it out, and then he would be good to go. When they actually got into his eye they found that he was born with the muscle shorter then normal, so they detached the muscle, moved it completely up, and then reattached. I thought he would come home with a super red eye, but it looked like nothing had happened. Just a tiny little red dot. It was so sad seeing him all hooked up to machines, and I hope we don't ever have to do it again! For those of you who know us and see us all the time know how little Ethan was. He weighed a good old 12 pounds at the time of the surgery...so he was 7 months old. He threw up CONSTANTLY. You couldn't hold him without being puked on. After surgery I had a completely different 7 month old. I don't think he threw up any more after that. It was night and day! He stared gaining weight immediately and reached a percent on the chart. My pediatrician was amazed and thinks that his equilibrium was off before the surgery, and now that he wasn't seeing all crazy was probably feeling a whole lot better. Thanks goodness for the good people who go to school to be doctors and can fix us all up! He won't ever be able to look WAY WAY up with that eye, but most of the time you can't even tell. Just one more thing to be grateful for!

Before...

After Surgery!

Now onto some not so fun news. On Thursday Kurt and I took Ethan to the eye doctor for an annual "year after surgery" check up. I've been noticing within the last couple of weeks that Ethan's other eye (the one that did not have surgery) was starting to go in a little bit, just slightly, not all the time. In fact most would probably not notice it. When we got to the doctors office he noticed it immediately since he stares at eyes all day long. He suggested that we dilate his eyes and that he would possibly need some glasses to fix what he thought was farsightedness. We waited while his eyes dilated and then went back in to the room. The doctor looked at him and then sat there for a minute and said, "this is unusual enough that he would have two different symptoms in two different eyes that I would really like him to have an MRI on the brain." Immediately my heart jumped and Kurt and I just sat there. The doctor is awesome and we have loved him so we want to do whatever he says. Anyways he went on to say that Ethan is actually favoring the eye that he had surgery on ....which means that the doctors did a dang good job.

For those of you who know me know that I am a pretty high stress person. Thanks to my loving and wonderful husband who is so strong and does not stress helped me get through the news. I asked the doctor to give me worse case scenario....brain tumor, hydrocephalus (pressure on the brain), etc. The best case scenario was that nothing would be wrong and we would patch his good eye so that the other eye would start getting stronger and then most likely some more surgery will be needed on his eye or both eyes. The doc also said that the possibilities of anything being wrong was 1% or less....but as a mom and the worrier that I am I worry about the worst possible outcome.

Dr. Larson highly recommended the MRI and told us if it was his son he would definitely do it. He as a doctor wanted to rule out everything (since the brain controls your eyes) and then go about doing surgery if that was what was needed. I'm so grateful to have such an aggressive doctor who wants to get to the bottom of this. We were lucky enough to get the MRI scheduled for the next day, which was yesterday.

So yesterday my little guy couldn't have anything but apple juice and clear jello to eat from 6:00 in the morning up until noon....then nothing from noon to 2:00. We headed up to Primary's and once again just sat and waited. They sedated Ethan about and hour or so after we checked in and then did the MRI. I waited in recovery with him while he came out of it. When they brought him in I asked if we could speak to the radiologist to see if they saw anything...the nurses and the girl that did the MRI told us that if the radiologist sees something big like a brain tumor the family would be told...so no news is good news. They told me to ask again when we were leaving though and he might be available. So when we were getting ready to leave we asked again...the nurse went back, he wasn't available, but she quickly asked and he said everything looks fine. That was the biggest relief. We will get the actual results from our eye doctor on Monday. We aren't out of the dark yet, there definitely could be something in his brain that is making his eyes do this, but we won't know until Monday. I'm just happy to know it's not a tumor or anything.

My emotions have been so crazy the last two days. I was physically and mentally exhausted last night. I'm so glad it's over, and hope that we get good news on Monday. We have to patch his eye for the next eight weeks for two hours a day and then go in again and see if we need to do more surgery. Thank you for all the prayers that went out in his behalf from family and friends...please keep him in your prayers as we wait to hear the results. I'm sure that he will be fine, but it's always the what if. I'm grateful for the power of Priesthood and for the power of prayer. I know Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers. We will keep you all posted when we hear results!!