Not even have the time to Twitter

Well I will take as much time as I can until I'm interrupted again!
We've been back in town 8 busy days now. Stitches were taken out of the cornea Wed. January 28th at 10 AM (that day I forgot my cell and couldn't even twiter about it till the end of the day). For once a childrens hospital O.R. wasn't running behind schedule that early in the day, and Grant went right in as scheduled and it's a darn good thing he did.
By trial and error and many experiences in infant cornea transplantation, the surgeon has determined the stitches need to come out 2 weeks after the transplant. On adult cornea grafts it's about a year, but if you leave them on an infant more than a few weeks it ruins the eye. Grant's were taken out exactly 2 weeks post-transplant. The dr. came out of the operating room shaking his head somberly saying,"I just don't know,Juliet. I sure hope this stays. It was starting to reject so I dumped the maximum amount of medicine into the eye right away, gave him a lot through his IV.... and he'll have no bandages on because I want you to put more in as often as you can."

I put the meds in every 30 minutes the rest of the day until we fell asleep. I tried to keep it up overnight but it ended up being every 90 minutes during the night because I just couldn't do it (Mike was arriving the next day so I was alone). In the morning it was back to every 30 minutes. And at the appointment I sat anxiously as the dr nervously examined the cornea and sighed in relief. "It's still good! Wow, I was nervous about this one yesterday." Then he disclosed to me that another 8 hours and that eye would have been ruined.

Yes, 8 hours. Like if the suture removal time would have been at 4 in the afternoon, and/or if the usual delays of the anistesioligists running late would have happened that day, the whole trip to San Diego and all of it would have been a waste. So if you think your prayers were not helping, you are wrong. They did. Thanks so so much! Continue to pray for Grant and his vision please. Let me explain why.
This is kind of how Mike and I are these days. Balancing a delicate little spec of dust on the stem of a flower we try so hard to take care of meticulously.

As I said before, the top layer is the most vital part of your cornea. Plenty of blind people have problems only with this part of their eye, even with the rest of their cornea and everything else working just fine. It's a really really thin (I think oily and liquidy) layer. Please try this as an experiment. Look down and close your eyes for a few seconds. Then look up, focus your eyes on something nearby,and don't blink for 15 seconds.

It kinda stings, didn't it? That's surface cells dying. Then you blinked a few times and it went away.It renews and moisturizes itself when you blink. You get the same stinging feeling if you are in really dry air or in the wind for very long, or if you get dust or dirt in your eye and it does no harm because you just blink and the cells regenerate.

Grant was not born with the stem cells for that. The top layer from this donor cornea is all he's gonna have always. Expecting his eye to be able to regenerate those cells makes about as much sense as a child born with one arm -who is then given a prosthetic arm- to begin growing an arm out of that shoulder. Uh, no sorry. It didn't develop in utero, so putting something else in there isn't gonna make it start growing. Basically the same thing here.

Speechless? Yeah, that's basically been the reaction of everyone who we've had the time to explain this to. Once they really get how this works, the eyes go wide in horror.

We are trying to be as careful as possible with him. We really need to be careful and protect his eye to retain his sight, for any amount of time. Therein lies the very low success rate for this procedure, esp. for long term. We do our best and hope it will last years and years and years, but are trying to enjoy it while it lasts. Every day and minute and dr appointment where we hear, "Wow, it's still clear." is a miracle.

I'm putting up some pics ASAP to flesh out the last few posts and show off my gorgeous boys. But now I hear my life calling again so see ya again soon computer. bye.

Juliet

edited to add: Did I sound sad or something? I'm really not because Grant can see things today, and another "All clear." at a dr. appt. this morning is great! I am not sad. It's a miracle, it really is. "Eyes go wide in horror." makes it sound like my son has something fatal. Seriously he's doing awesome at the moment and on the advice of the surgeon I just can't ponder on the long term of all this and the "what ifs". One day at a time is the way to go. And today was great! Just wanted to clarify. I'll go get the pictures off the memory card now.