Hospital Follow Ups

Aug. 25-26, 2014

Emily did really well taking the oral antibiotics, steroids and eye drops.  By the time we headed to see Dr. Lalin, the retina specialist that Dr. Morgan had suggested, most of the redness and swelling had gone away. Dr. Lalin's office was in Morristown near the hospital and we had never been there before.  We waited a loooooong time. And as a new patient, they knew nothing about Emily.  Not a surprise that when we finally got called into the room for the nurse to talk to us and do the preliminary exam, that we left just a minute later...she was blind in the eye  we were there to examine. After what we had just been through the last thing I wanted to deal with were people who had no idea who Emily was or what her medical history entailed.  The girl in the first exam room was short with me, so I was short with her in return. No she doesn't see any light, shadows or objects. She's blind in that eye and we are just here as a follow up to make sure there is no infection inside. We left the room and I went back out to the waiting area where we once again...waited. Over all before we were actually brought back into a real exam room we waited a hour and a half.  Then we waited another 45 minutes before Dr. Lalin came in.  We quickly reviewed her latest issue and then were escorted to yet another room, where we, yep you guessed it, waited. He came into the room, did a quick ultrasound of her eye and confirmed that there was no infection inside the eye.  He also chimed in with a very condescending comment regarding her seeing eye saying "her cornea graft is failing, it should probably be replaced".  Thanks, I didn't notice that before.  I don't feel we needed to go see him at all...such a waste of my time and money.

The next day we went to see Dr. Kane, and he did a much more in depth exam of both eyes, as well as his own ultrasound.  He agreed, no infection inside or behind the eye which was good news. Also good news was that her pressure was still good in the right eye, maintaining at around 12.  However, he did feel that the cornea was starting to interfere with her vision, he couldn't really get a good look at the cataract or the retina because the cornea was so rough and hazy.  He agreed...she needed another transplant.

The infection was gone, but cornea surgery was once again on the horizon.  It wasn't a surprise, I knew it was coming...I just didn't know how soon it would be.

We were barely recovering from this crisis...I don't think I could tackle another one so soon.