Things Don't Always Turn Out the Way You Want

Ryan had two appointments today: One with a urologist, and one with his eye doctor. The urologist told us that Ryan will definitely need surgery, and the eye doctor said she would like to do one more surgery on him as well. It was not exactly the news I had hoped for.

We had hoped that Ryan's urological problem, a stenosis, could be treated in the doctor's office, but the urologist said it would only have a 50% chance of success if done in-office (though he was willing to try if we thought Ryan would lay still for it...uh, no.) versus the 100% success rate he's had with outpatient surgery. We opted for the outpatient surgery. He will probably have it done in October.

Then we went for a six-month post-op check-up for Ryan's eyes. His surgeon said everything looks good except that one eye is slightly higher than the other, something we really hadn't noticed. At first she said it is really only cosmetic, but then I mentioned a couple of interesting things I've noticed when he's reading to me and she thought maybe his eyes could be the cause. So we are going to experiment with patching during reading to see if it helps. If it does, then she definitely recommends another minor surgery to even his eyes out a little more. It won't correct the crossing any more than what he has now, but it might help him to use both eyes together better than he is now.

The only good news today was that we will probably be able to do both surgeries at the same time (if we can coordinate two surgeons' schedules), so he would only need to go under general anesthesia once.

Ryan is less than thrilled with the idea of having another surgery (or two...he doesn't know about the eyes yet), and frankly so am I. However, I am not tempted to be as fearful as I was the first time. I just don't want to see my little boy hurting again. Thankfully we have a God who allowed His Son to undergo unimaginable suffering so that we may "draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:16)