"Doctor Day"

What we thought would be one quick appointment yesterday morning stretched into an all day event. Gray's appointment was at 8:00 am. We planned to go to the appointment, grab some breakfast, check out of the hotel and head back home. Of course, nothing went as planned.


Dr. Holz looked at Gray's eyes, and for the third time we were told that the cataracts definitely needed to come out. Then he asked if we knew if the surgery would be done from the front or back or the eye. We didn't know, and no, I don't know how you would do surgery from the back of the eye. Dr. Holz is concerned with Gray's retinas and believes that doing the surgery from the back of the eye would have the least risk of retinal detachment. He also said if he did the surgery he would go ahead and "laser the retina" to help prevent future problems. Your guess is as good as mine as to what exactly that means.


Dr. Holz sent us to see another pediatric ophthalmologist (that makes 3, count them 3, pediatric ophthalmologists that we've seen) at Texas Children's to get her point of view. She agreed with Dr. Holz that Gray's retina's should be of concern and that she would have a retina specialist do his surgery.

What we do know is that Dr. Holz has the most comprehensive history of what happened to Kenny and we believe that puts in him in a position to take the best care of Gray. We returned to his office and scheduled the surgery. The surgery will be done on November 3rd at Texas Children's in Houston.

After checking out of hotel almost two hours late and grabbing a bite to eat we went to the day surgery center at Texas Children's for the pre-op appointment. It went well, but was a lot of come into a room, got back to the waiting room, come into a room, go back out. We were glad to do that while we were already down there and not have to make another special trip.


We finally left Houston at 4:00. Traveling with a baby isn't always fast, so it took forever to get home. It was after 9:00 when we stopped to pick Nate up.


We'll return to Houston on Sunday, 11/2. We have to be at the surgery center at 6:00 am on 11/3 and the surgery is scheduled for 7:30. The length of the surgery is on our list of questions to call and ask. We'll stay Monday night as well and Gray will have a follow up appointment on Tuesday, 11/4. Hopefully one of the ophthalmologists that we've been seeing up here will work with Dr. Holz to do our one week follow up appointment so we don't have to make another trip to Houston. After Dr. Holz finishes the first eye (the right eye) and has a better understanding of what is going on he'll schedule the left eye for two to three weeks later.

It feels good to finally have a date scheduled and feel really comfortable with the doctor.