Eyeball surgery

Hyrum gets ready for surgery on his lazy eye.

A couple weeks ago, my littlest guy, 5-year-old Hyrum, had to have surgery on his eyes. Surgery on any part of the body is a big deal, of course, but surgery on the eyes seems particularly high stakes. His doctor assured me it was a fairly routine procedure, but there’s not much you can say to calm a worst-case scenario kind of person like me.  

You tell me our family is going on a canoe trip on a calm lake, and I envision overturned canoes and floating paddles being found by rescuers twelve hours later. You say I’ve just won a million dollars, and I think of how I’ll die alone and destitute after being scammed out of every last penny. I’m real fun to be around at parties.

So needless to say, thinking of my son having knives stuck into his eyeballs wasn’t something that brought me peace and tranquility. Logan talked me down numerous times, but I was still buzzing with nerves the morning of the surgery as I pulled our car into the parking lot of the children’s hospital and led Hyrum up the elevator, down the maze of hallways, and into the surgery center. 

All I can say is, people who work at a children’s hospital are heaven-sent. As soon as we walked in, the woman at the front desk welcomed Hyrum and made a little wristband for him AND a tiny matching wristband for the stuffed turtle he’d brought to snuggle with before surgery. Our doctor and multiple nurses took time to thoroughly and patiently explain exactly how the surgery and recovery would go. And when the time came for Hyrum’s procedure, the anesthesiologist pulled out her phone and let him watch a few minutes of his favorite PBS show as they pushed his gurney down the hall to the operating room (thank you, doctor who is also a mother!). 

I settled in for the 45-minute wait until he was done, and before I knew it, I was being brought back to the recovery room, where Hyrum was sleeping more soundly than I have ever seen him sleep before. That boy was loving the after-effects of the anesthesia, and there was no waking him, even when I whispered into his ear that it was time for his long-awaited post-surgery popsicle. After several minutes of sawing logs, he finally began to stir. 

“Am I blind?” he immediately asked, not realizing that his pitch-black world was the result of still having his eyes shut.

“No buddy, you’re not blind. Whenever you feel like opening your eyes, just go ahead,” I said. “Here’s a popsicle.”

He lay there with his eyes closed like a tired baby bird while I hand-fed him a popsicle and two bags of Goldfish crackers, and a little while later, he was given the all-clear to go home. The nurse set an ice pack over his eyes and tied it around the back of his head, and then we secured braces around each of his elbows so he couldn’t bend his arms and rub his eyes during the drive home. An orderly came with a wheelchair and we propped him up in it before heading out to the elevators leading to the parking garage.

People couldn’t help but stare at this woozy little kid waiting for the elevator in a wheelchair; he looked like he’d just been in a chopper crash in Nam. 

When we got home, I thought he’d drift off to sleep for hours and I’d enjoy a quiet afternoon, but no dice. He was almost immediately back to his old, energetic self—and I was grateful. Because there’s really no such thing as a “routine” surgery. It’s a big deal, and for patients and families, it can bring fear and uncertainty. My hat goes off to excellent health care professionals everywhere who do all they can to ensure best-case scenarios for everyone involved—even a wiggly five-year-old, a nervous mom, and a stuffed turtle who’s just along for the ride.