A New Prescription

Wow, it has really been a crazy busy year for our family.  Since my last blog (5 months ago), we have moved in to a beautiful home in north Peachtree City.  We have been busy with projects since we moved in mid-July.   Everyone is enjoying the new house.   Eric loves the proximity to the interstate (he does still have a decent commute all the way to Buckhead though), the girls absolutely love their enormous playroom and the big yard, and I love pretty much everything about it! Eric will be in heaven once his basement is complete and he finally gets his man cave.  Right now, we have doubled our square footage from our first house and when the basement is finished we will have tripled it! It is so nice to finally have room to spread out. 

I started this blog as a way to keep friends and family and anyone else who may be curious, up to date about Peyton’s progress.  That is what I will continue to focus on.  Our sweet angel, Peyton, is now 14 months old! She is about 8.5 months post-surgery.  Lately, we have been averaging about one visit to the ophthalmologist a month and sometimes two. Unfortunately, her doctor no longer comes to the Newnan office one day a week, so I am bringing her all the way to St. Joseph’s hospital on the north side of the city.   It is worth the drive to know that she is receiving the best care possible.  When I was in the office this week, I met a mother whose daughter had skull surgery as an infant.  Her neurosurgeon told the mother that Dr. Lipsky is hands down the best pediatric ophthalmologist in the state.  Those are pretty comforting words coming from a neurosurgeon.  It also helps me understand why I generally wait well over an hour every time we go to see him.  An excellent doctor is worth the wait.

The doctor continues to tell us that from an anatomical stand point her eye looks absolutely perfect.  However, her brain is still being stubborn and not wanting to use her left eye.  The absolute only way that she will make improvements and have a chance at remotely decent vision in that eye is for us to force her to use it through wearing a patch and/or her new treatment which I will get to shortly. Peyton’s patching regimen has changed multiple times over the course of the past few months.  Most recently, it has been all day, every other day.  The problem with the patch is that Peyton HATES to wear it.  On patch days, I would literally spend the entire day distracting her.  Some days she still managed to go through 6-8 patches/day.  She would be cranky and cry all day long.  I can’t hardly blame her.  The patch became a huge source of stress and guilt for me as well.  I knew that since patching was the only thing which could help her, the future of her vision depended completely upon how well I was able to keep her patched.  If she pulled off the patch and I wasn’t able to get it back on right away, I would feel this pit in my stomach knowing that every minute she goes without it takes away from her ultimate prognosis.  I really could not do anything on patch days. No cooking, no showering, no going out to run errands, and no doing chores around the house.  I felt guilty that I couldn’t give Leah much attention.  I also felt guilty that I felt sorry for myself when Peyton is really the one that I should feel sorry for.  This past Monday I took Peyton to see the doctor and he told me that despite my many efforts, Peyton is still not making much progress.  Thus, we must move on to the next course of treatment.  It was extremely disappointing to hear that she has not made progress and I also felt somewhat like a failure.  However, I am extremely optimistic about this new course of treatment and so far she seems to be much happier with it.  Instead of wearing an eye patch over her good eye, Peyton will now wear a contact lens in it.  Right now we are working with simple daily contacts with the highest prescription they come in (+6).  She will wear the contact every other day to completely blur her good eye, therefore, forcing her to use her bad one. The hardest part is obviously putting the contact in.  She does not like it to say the least.  Eric has to hold her down while I put it in.  I have actually been able to get it in after only a couple of tries.  Once it is in, she is completely fine.  In fact, she is happy as a clam.  This is a huge improvement.  I like it because I don’t feel like I have to be hovering over her all day now.   Of course, there is a reason that this is only the back-up treatment.  When you are putting a high powered contact lens in an eye that does not need any prescription at all you always run the risk of hurting the vision in that good eye.  This is why she will be closely monitored by her doctor.  Since we are now actually putting something in her eye, there is also a slight risk of infection.  Of course, we have complete confidence in her doctor and trust that this treatment will be effective without any negative side effects.  So poor Peyton now has an implant lens in her left eye, a contact in her right eye, and glasses on top of that!  In addition to all of this, she will almost surely have an additional surgery on her eye muscles in the coming year.  So that is what is happening with the eyes! Please keep Peyton in your prayers.  Pray that her brain accepts her left eye and starts to use it.  Pray that she will have awesome vision in both eyes!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I will say that we have many things to be thankful for this year.   We are thankful for our beautiful daughters who are so very different but have equally blessed our lives beyond words.  We are thankful for our amazing friends and family who have been so supportive this year.  We are thankful for Peyton’s excellent doctor and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.  We are thankful that Eric has a job that he loves and that allows him to provide for our family while I stay at home with the girls.  We are thankful that after 19 months our house finally sold! We are thankful for our new home.  Finally, we are thankful that we have an awesome God, without which we would have nothing to be thankful for!