I thought I would write a quick post on this in case anyone else has this issue and wants to read another experience.
Will Holden had blocked tear ducts in both eyes from birth. I knew about it and wasn't worried because Hollis had the same thing. Only hers cleared up after a few months. Will Holden's didn't. They would get worse if he had any allergies or a cold but pretty much every day they would be gunky and crusty and sometimes swollen shut. We constantly cleaned with a warm washcloth which is about all you can do but it just never got better.
Almost always, the blocked tear ducts clear up by the first birthday but if they don't, surgery is often required. We waited until he was a year old and then saw an eye doctor and scheduled a surgery. (If you read here - you may remember that we showed up for surgery and they didn't have us down. And I don't lose my temper often but mama bear was NOT happy that day after dragging three kids to the hospital at 4:30 in the morning with zero apologies from the doctor or hospital and I had my appointment card in hand. Okay - sorry. I didn't need to get stirred up again).
So thankfully there is another doctor in our area who sees young patients and we had to wait and get a referral but we finally saw him and scheduled another surgery. The great thing is one eye cleared up on it's own but his left eye was still bad. Always red and crusty and swollen. The doctor basically just put a tube in his eye.
The surgery itself probably didn't last 10-15 minutes. It's pretty simple. But it did require him to go under an IV anesthesia This made him SOOOOOOOO mad when he woke up. If you have a child who has ever gone under - you know they can be hysterical when they wake up. We ended up being in recovery for probably an hour and a half because he was so mad and we couldn't leave until he drank something and he refused. We offered water, juice, popsicles and even chocolate ice cream but he would NOT eat or drink. He finally drank some water and ate a little ice cream.
They told us he would be probably be sleepy the rest of the day and want to just rest.
um. not quite.
After we got home, he was back to his usual self. He was running around and playing like nothing had happened.
We have to give him eye drops every 4 hours and I figured he would flail around and hate it but he has been SO great about it.
