Soon

You wanna know how you can tell when Kale is about to have surgery? A week before whatever surgery (this is his 3rd--2nd dealing with his eyes) I become an emotional wreck who is obsessed with Googling everything I can think of regarding his condition and the surgery taking place.

I've mentioned before how he's going to have surgery to reopen his left eye and how they are going to take out the conformer that is in his right eye. Then they are going to put these things called hydrogel expanders in. All I can remember the doctor saying about them is that there's a bit of "sewing" involved and that afterward his eyes will look "very angry". They'll look "very angry" for a while. Take that however you want.

Anyway, so I just want to know exactly what we're dealing with here. What do these hydrogel expanders look like? What will they look like when they're in? How is the procedure done? What's the recovery time like?

Luckily, I think my questions have been somewhat answered. If you go to that link, there is a brief but simple (enough) explanation of how they work and if you click the little red arrow under the picture you can see a few more pictures--if you can't handle looking at surgery of any kind, don't look at the rest of the pictures!!! It's really not that bad, but I don't know what anyone can and cannot handle. The last two pictures are the ones I like the best--a before and after of a child who has bilateral anophthalmia (no eyes) who had expanders put in. In the before picture his eyelids are tiny and narrow just like Kale's (although Kale's are a bit more severe) but in the after they look a lot wider.

I have read a lot of other parent's comments regarding having these expanders in and I am worried that Kale will rip them out. He's so mobile now and all over the place. He's always doing the hand pressing thing with his left eye, too which has me worried that we'll be making a trip back to UAB sooner than we're supposed to. I guess we'll just deal with that when/if that time comes.

Anyway. I'm just getting nervous. I know that's perfectly normal but he's my baby boy and I just want him to be okay.