These past few weeks have flown by as the Thanksgiving celebrations and Christmas break came and went faster than any other year that I can remember. It is probably obvious at this point, but this has been a really rough and difficult few months for Aubree and I. We are really looking forward to 2014, despite the fact that nothing really changes...it just seems like a fresh start in a lot of ways. This year has been a season of change for us as we found out Aubree was pregnant in January, did all the fun baby prep, welcomed Hazel in October and we are now navigating uncharted waters concerning Hazel's health.
I wanted to get a blog entry posted to recap some of the things that have happened between my last blog post and now. If nothing else, this blog has helped me organize my thoughts and keep track of how we got to where we are...but I still appreciate you taking the time to read it.
Where to begin? I guess the headline here should be that Hazel had her second cornea transplant on Friday, December 13 at Cooks Children's Hospital. (Luckily we were not too superstitious about the whole "Friday the 13th" thing). The surgery for Hazel's left eye went about as well as it could have and is better, in a few ways, than the first cornea replacement. The donated cornea for Hazel's left eye is 10 years old and a VERY clear cornea, which is a really great news. You can clearly see Hazel's pupil in her left eye and she is continuing to heal and progress every day. We still go to one of our various doctors for regular check-ups, consultations or post-op exams pretty often...but we are able to manage. The biggest adjustment this time around is the amount of eye drops that Hazel receives every day. There was definitely a learning curve for us to remember how many drops go in which eye and differentiating between "Hazel's left or my left?". But after a few days we fell into a rhythm with her 16 daily eye drops and have done our best to stick to her eye drop schedule.
A few other noteworthy things have gone on this month, bullet points might be best here for the sake of reading time:
- Last month we moved from the Plano area back to Coppell. We left our little apartment behind and moved into a new house with Aubree's parents. This wasn't in our original plans, but Hazel's need for medical care made our decision pretty easy! I don't really want to broadcast our new address to the internet, but if you want our new mailing address just shoot me an e-mail. (GrantWiede@gmail.com)
- Hazel will go under anesthesia a minimum of two more times in the next two months to remove her sutures. The first procedure will remove the remaining sutures from the first surgery along with half from the second surgery. Then Hazel will go back under in February to remove the remaining sutures.
Thanks again for reading and for taking the time to check up on Hazel.
