Hey, maybe now that a couple of hurdles have been hurdled I’ll start updating the blog more often. I guess only time will tell.
If you’re reading this you probably know that Pearl was born with strabismus. This is a condition which causes her eyes to not work together properly. In Pearl’s case, her eyes tend to angle out - which is called exotropia (or, if you’re not a doctor, wall-eyed). Congenital (from birth) exotropia is apparently fairly uncommon and is usually associated with other scary problems. However, Pearl has undergone a battery of tests (okay, mostly just an MRI of the brain) which seem to indicate that there isn’t any obvious cause of her condition.
What does this mean? Well, practically speaking it means that when Pearl looks at something only one eye is pointing at that something and the other eye is pointing at something else. This is kind of confusing when you’re interacting with her because it’s hard to tell what she’s looking at. The eye doctor is fairly confident that she sees well with each eye individually and that she basically just uses whichever eye she feels like to look at things. Apparently, her brain is able to selectively ignore what the other eye is seeing, preventing her from having double vision.
The deviation is pretty dramatic with Pearl’s eyes. As she’s gotten older she has actually been able to pull her eyes together to focus on things from time to time but it usually doesn’t last long and one of her eyes drifts off. To prevent her brain from permanently giving up on one eye and just use the other for seeing things we have had to patch one of her eyes each day for about 90 minutes. We alternate the eye that we patch, forcing her to keep using both eyes.
The doctor said that technically we didn’t have to do anything to fix Pearl’s condition. She would likely have gone through life without much trouble seeing things. Her depth perception would have been impacted, but even there it’s not like she would have had no ability to perceive depth. However, if nothing else, it’s a bit of a cosmetic issue having one of her eyes all over the place.
So, to continue a long story and make it longer, last week Pearl had surgery on her eyes to hopefully correct her strabismus. Believe it or not, this procedure involves moving the muscles on the side of the eyeballs in order to realign them. It seems scary but it is apparently a fairly routine and risk free thing (hey, even her eye doctor has had the procedure done on him… I’m not sure if that’s good or bad).
She came out of it great. The anesthesia took a while to wear off but her eyes look pretty good - not too swollen and just a little red. It’s to early to tell if the procedure was successful but we can already see that her eyes are aligned much better. Se may need an additional adjustment down the road but it’s too soon to know about that.
We’re very happy to be past the surgery - it had been looming for quite a while. Big sister Coral was very concerned about Pearl but is happy to see that she is doing well.
I have been terrible with the blog. Sorry about that. Here are some updates.
Coral
Coral finished up her first year of preschool. She had a week (or was it two?) and has started a two week summer session. There are a handful of kids in her new class that were in her old one but it’s mostly new kids. I asked her the other day how her new friends were and she said, “they’re not my friends yet - I’m not used to them.”
The outdoor pool opened and she’s really enjoying that. At Aunt Carole’s house she cruises around the entire pool on her noodle. At the pool by our house she has discovered that she can touch the bottom in the shallow end (she must be a foot taller than she was last summer!). She tried on her snorkel gear the other day and like it - but she has to get more used to it before I think she could really snorkel. Her swimming is coming along. I suspect that by the end of summer she’ll be swimming like a fish.
Recently (today) Coral joined the world of Twitter. She has noticed me tweeting before so I asked her if she wanted to try it. I told her how you could use Twitter to tell people what you’re doing during the day. When I asked her if she wanted to try it her response (I didn’t make this up) was, “No. I don’t understand it.” I think that’s what I said the first time someone told me about Twitter! I’m not sure I get it now either.
Coral still really loves her sister. She’s not too rough with her. If we take Pearl away Coral usually responds, “don’t take her, she’s MINE!”
Pearl
Pearl is 7 months old now! A couple of weeks ago she got her first tooth and now has two cute little bottom teeth. She’s still a smiling machine. She loves to spit and blow raspberries a lot. Her hair is getting longer and it’s still red. She is super chubby. She can’t sit up or roll over yet but she holds herself up well on her tummy and she really likes to stand if you hold her hands. She sits/stands in the exersaucer and really seems to enjoy it. She’s still sleeping in our bed but is a good sleeper and hardly ever cries.
She’s scheduled to have surgery in a couple of weeks to correct her strabismus. It’s supposed to be a pretty routine procedure so we’re trying to not worry about it too much - but of course we’re a little worried. If it’s successful it will be nice to have her eyes lined up.
I’m sure there are many details I’m forgetting - but that’s all I have right now.
For those of you who look at my little Twitter feed on the side of the blog I just wanted to follow up on my mention of a pediatric ENT - I don’t want anyone to worry!
Pearl has unilateral choanal atresia - which basically just means that she was born with one nostril that is basically closed. This isn’t a big deal, her other nostril is fine and allows her to breath without any trouble. However, for a few different reasons, we’re thinking of having them do a procedure to open up the closed nostril. This requires a CT scan so the doctor can see exactly what he’s up against. We went in for the CT scan this morning but the order from the doctor wasn’t specific enough for the technician - it didn’t say exactly what she was supposed to do the CT scan of. It was fairly dumb because the order did say “choanal atresia” and that is a condition of the nose - hence the CT scan should be of the nose.
It probably wasn’t the tech’s fault but she couldn’t do anything until someone (she claimed it had to be the doctor who ordered the CT) told her what exactly to do CT of. This was 8:15am so our doctor wasn’t readily available. Being in a hospital full of doctors apparently didn’t help either. However, when the radiologist finally got there he apparently said something to the effect of, “duh, we should do a CT scan of her nose.”
So, it all worked out fine. Pearl was such a great kid that they didn’t have to conk her out - she stayed still for the quick scan. It will be a couple of weeks before we know the results of the scan and make a decision about her nose.
Here are some photos for you. Last Saturday we went into the city for the Cherry Blossom Parade. The weather was great and we had a good time. Coral really likes parades.
Then on Sunday we went to the circus. I thought this version of the circus wasn’t as good as the last one we saw. It had a fairly weak story line (I suggest no story line) and a very weak finale. I think a good circus is like a good fireworks show - you have no doubt when it is over. But Coral seemed to enjoy the circus so that’s what really matters.
I’ve thrown in some other random photos. Coral got hold of the camera for a while and snapped a few shots - not half bad!
Click on the thing to jump into the album with the full-sized pictures.
