Tomorrow and Beyond

This evening Scott and I are going it alone! Aunt Jo and Stacia flew home (Florida) yesterday and GGmom (great grandmom), GGdad (great grandad), and Justin's weekend visit ended this afternoon. Tonight is the first time in awhile we have cared for both boys alone. The house feels a bit empty. Thanks for everyone's help. Aunt Jo was the originator, participator, and monitor of many projects in and around the house. She and Stacia, her assistant, were probably ready for a vacation themselves!

Tomorrow is Duncan's eye surgery. As I started to explain before, he will be under anesthesia for about 1 1/2 hours during the procedure, which removes the lense with the cataract (in his right eye). Infants with cataracts do not receive replacement false lenses right away (as adults could). In its stead, Duncan will need to wear a contact lense until that happens (the surgery which installs the false lense occurs generally between 8 and 12 years of age). This contact lense, thankfully, only needs changes every 2 months initially, until he is able to cooperate with a contact lense that gets changed daily. He will need to wear bifocal glasses at around 2 or 3 years of age, which allows him to switch his vision from up close to distant. Starting tomorrow, he will need to begin the practice of "patching" - placing a patch over his left "good" eye in order to train the right "bad" eye to compensate. Duncan needs to wear his patch approximately half of his wake hours. We believe we heard correctly that this needs to happen until the implant lens surgery at 8 - 12 years of age. We will also need to administer special eye drops 4 times a day and different drops before and after his naps. (Disclaimer: All of this was communicated to us by the opthimologist we just met Thursday and the conversation was a total of maybe 15 minutes long, so we could have gotten some details wrong, but this is the gist of it!)

Needless to say, we are a little worn out. Clearly, Duncan's eye troubles are not nearly as life threatening as his heart problem has potential to be. However, it does feel to us that it is more life altering in the day to day - in addition to his heart meds, we will be dropping the heck out of his eye and worrying with the patch. We have our moments of "Are we strong enough to handle all of this?" But, at the end of the day, (or, as the case may be, at the end of each gripe-fest we may have with each other!) Scott and I know that indeed - with God's strength - we WILL handle all of Duncan's health concerns with grace and be better for it.

On a side note, who knew cataracts could even happen in babies?

Be with us in prayer tomorrow. Every time they put our little Duncan under, we are naturally anxious.

Enjoy below shots of the fam... For some reason we have more good ones of Jackson (perhaps because all of the type is dedicated to Duncan - Jackson wants his chance to shine!). More to come of Duncan.





GGmom with Jackson
GGdad with Duncan
Jackson in his swing
Gotta love this "old man" outfit... thanks Emily and Jason!
Jackson is already learning the are of the french kiss (actually, he was rooting around and thought my lips might provide milk! HEE! HEE!)