It's Not Surgery, It's a Procedure

Henry's eye surgery is complete. Actually, Dr. Erenberg, the attending neonatalogist, was very adamant that it is not a "surgery," it is a "procedure" or a "treatment." Of course as he is explaining this to Kate for the second time, a nurse walks up and asks when the "laser surgery" is going to take place. Cue the exasperated look on the doctors face and a laugh track. The difference between surgery and a procedure being? The best we could get was that they don't have to cut Henry open, which seems to be the criteria for surgery.

Anyway, it is done and seems to have gone ok. We won't really know for another 10 days, which is when we have a follow up with the eye doctor. My understanding is that they used the laser to destroy the outside of the retina. The reason for this is that blood vessels did not have time to grow in that area. So the eye tries to compensate by creating new blood vessels which are not normally there and extend them to the part of the eye on the edges that did not develop the blood vessels. By destroying the part that is lacking the blood vessels, the need for the blood at the outer parts of the retina is removed and so the abnormal blood vessels stop growing. If left unchecked the abnormal vessels would rupture and cause scarring that would cause the retina to detach, bunch up, and wrinkle, eventually detaching and causing blindness.

The retina doctor, Dr. Patel, used the laser to zap the outer part of the retina 4487 times in his right eye and 4780 times in his left eye. He said that the numbers weren't an indicator of which eye was worse off. The one that he did 4700 times was actually better off, but it had more area that was available to zap with the laser so he zapped it. He said it was like coloring, you fill in as much as you possibly can in the area available.

After the surgery, um, I mean procedure, Henry was pretty sacked out. His eyes didn't look too puffy. They have to hold the eyes open with clamps which tends to cause the eyes to puff up for a couple days. He had a few apnea/brady episodes. That is fairly common because they are so relaxed due to the sedation. These will not count against him in the count of 5 days without an apnea or brady that he needs to be released.

He was rather cold. They tried to read his temperature and couldn't get the thermometer to work. This happened once before when he was very cold. They put him under a warmer and put some warm blankets on him and he warmed up rather quickly. That was a bit unnerving but it is unlikely to cause him any problems as it was only for a short period of time.

He was weighed at 2230 grams but that seems very unlikely because it is 130 grams more than the previous night. He had an iv in him, which adds a little. We're guessing it's mostly water. Tonight should be a better gauge of his true weight. He started to wake up around midnight and even took a little food. We left him in Nadine's capable hands around 2am.

Kate's parents were there for the duration of the procedure. Holly also came in during her vacation time so she could help get him prepped and stayed around until almost midnight to keep us company. I think she is keeping an eye on Kate and myself as much as she is on Henry. We all went down the cafeteria for a bite to eat while we waited. The procedure took a couple hours to complete. It also got started a bit late. It was originally scheduled for 4pm. Then they changed it to 3pm about and hour before hand. Then they didn't actually get started until about 4:30pm.

This morning Joyce has reported that he is doing well. He ate 50ml's at 7:30am and at around 10:15am his grandpa was about to feed him again. He looks good and the apnea/brady episodes seem to have stopped.

Grandpa Kenski is going to stay there for a while this morning to let Kate and me get some rest. Of course after going to bed at 3:30am, my work called at 7:30am. Ugh! I'm going to go shopping for a car seat this morning and Kate is going to go visit him.