My daughter is freaking tough!

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by Venkman

Jeff, I tried to boardmail you but you're over your quota...

Who performed your son's surgeries, and would you recommend him?

Thanks.

Sorry about that. Fixed now.

His name is Dr. Williams with the Rocky Mountain Eye clinic in SLC. He was a pediatric ophthalmologist. However, he retired recently (which is a bit odd since he seemed fairly young). Not sure who to recommend now.

Let me tell you our story. Our son was born a month early and had a low birth weight. In addition to a learning disability, he suffered from strabismus and soft teeth (some have zero enamel). All are indicators that he suffered some sort of trauma in the womb. We started noticing his strabismus when he was two or three years old. We took him to a couple of regular opthalmologists and our regular peditrician and they all told us not to worry about it. They said that he would "grow out of it". When he was about four years old we took him to highly specialized pediatrician at Primary Children's Hospital because we knew something was wrong with him at that point (the learning disability part). He ran a series of tests and confirmed our fears. But on that first visit he told us that the second we got home we should make an appt with a pediatric ophthalmologist and get his eyes fixed. He said that if we delayed much longer, our son would be at risk of permanent eye damage. And he referred us to Dr. Williams.

We got home and made the appt. Dr. Williams told us that at about six years, the brain will start to shut down the nerves associated with the non-dominant eye resulting in permanent eye damage and in some cases blindness. Hence the urgency from the pediatrician at Primary Childrens. We scheduled surgery right away on the non-dominant eye. It lasted about 30 minutes and they snipped the muscles on either side of his eye, rotated his eye and reattached the muscles. It worked pretty well, but after a year his eyes were still wandering, especially when he was tired. So they did another surgery, this time on the other eye. That seemed to do the trick. Hasn't had a problem since.

A few years later, some friends of ours came to visit from out of state. Their son was about four years old and had the same problem. We asked the parents about it and they didn't even have a clue that his eyes weren't lining up. They took him to pediatric ophthalmologist and got the same story and did the same surgery (he is fine now). Their doctor (in Louisiana) told them that he was about to inform the next family out in the waiting room that there was nothing they could do for their son. It was too late. In addition, there are two teenagers in our neighborhood that both have permanent eye damage (they wear very strong corrective lenses) because they didn't get it diagnosed until they were about eight years old and it was too late to fix. We feel quite fortunate that it worked out for our son.

Of course I get angry thinking about the two ophthalmologists that we took him to early on. Of all people, you would think an ophthalmologist would properly diagnose it. And to have not one, but two give us the wrong diagnosis is amazing. Bottom line: go to a pediatric ophthalmologist, not a regular ophthalmologist. And don't delay.

[myboynoah]

Originally Posted by bYuPride

My 5 month old daughter had surgery to have a cyst removed above her left eye 2 days ago. The plastic surgeon said that it was very big for her size and age... they scraped a lot off the bone. She now has a little scar over her eye (that should disapper by Christmas), but her eye lid has stayed open despite the Dr. saying that she wouldn't have the strength to keep it open because of all the scraping they did.

I'm still a new dad, but I find it amazing how proud I can be of her for doing little things. Besides that, I never thought I could love something that much. She's the best.

That's sweet.

Thank you for sharing.

[il Padrino Ute]

Glad to hear everything will be fine with your little one.

Kids are awesome. It's amazing how much they can make us love them and all they ever did was be born.