Travis is having eye surgery tomorrow. He noticed diminished vision in his right eye on Thursday. By Friday night he was pretty worried, but couldn't get in to the dr until today. The opthomologist saw a big problem and sent us up to meet with an eye surgeon because over half of Trav's retina is detached! We spent the afternoon in Rockville, MD having photos taken of his eyes and various tests. The surgery was scheduled for tomorrow at 2pm in Bethesda, MD.
Apparently this kind of thing happens with an injury, or in Trav's case, nearsightedness or genetics. He only sees about half of the field of vision in his right eye, but after surgury, will recover 90% of the vision he lost. It will take around 2 hours for the surgeon to put a band around the eye and then use a gas bubble and special gel to hold the retina in place. His recovery will take about a week, during which time all he can do is basically sit and watch tv. They don't want him putting any undue pressure on his eye: no reading, no lifting over 35lbs, no household chores, no bending over, no holding back sneezes or even coughing too much. He can return to work and start doing more after the first week, but can't lift anything really heavy for quite a while. They will also have to monitor the left eye for the same problem from now on.
The surgeon was very nice and I'm sure will do a great job. I've got the older boys at a friend's house tomorrow and will take Hayden to the hospital with us. We'll keep you all posted on how things go and maybe even give you some pics of Trav with his cool eye patch he's looking forward to wearing.
Besides that drama, things are busy as usual here. Grant was out of school all last week due to a nasty ice/freezing rain storm. We got 4-6 inches of snow, but then a bunch of sleet and freezing rain that turned the snow into concrete. With the 20 degree highs, it took a ton of work to dig out. I heard they used a roto-tiller in the church parking lot to break up the snow it was so hard. They also had a lot of warnings about cleaning the snow/ice off the top of your car because they were having problems with snow sliding off of cars and smashing through other people's windshields. So anyway, it was cold and we spent a lot of time inside. With all of the weather, we celebrated Valentine's day late, but had a good time.
On a food storage note, a family in our ward gave us our year's supply of wheat. Their kids are grown and they are moving, so they wanted to get rid of it. We are excited to have it and we even found a place to store it in our basement! Our other food storage milestone is the freezer I've filled with breastmilk. haha, I'm still pumping and have crammed every space in the freezer full of extra milk for later. So we bought a small chest freezer and put it in the basement. When that thing is full, I'm quitting! haha Pumping has been tough, but it sure beats spending $100/month on formula!
Hope everyone is well and we'll keep you posted on how Travis is doing. We've also got a couple videos to post in the next few days too.
Oh man, Brian is totally jealous of your new eye patch, Travis. He says he wants to be a pirate like his big brother. That totally sucks though, although I'm guessing it is much better to find out when it is only mostly detatched and not totally detatched. Good luck! Good thing you'll have LOST to keep you company while you recover!
ReplyDeleteI love all the pictures! Good luck Trav. We'll be praying for you - along with everyone going to the temple on the west coast (and Hawaii) today! Hahahahaha.
ReplyDeleteYou guys can't say your life is boring now can you?
ReplyDeleteI really liked the bathtub picture with all the boys the best. For some reason it turned out awesome and they look so cute. We're worried for Travis and hoping all goes well for him.
How old is that wheat anyway?
Great pictures and keep us up to date. I promise I'll answer my phone today.