Joey's first trip to the eye doctor....

When I revealed the answers to this week's edition of What Is That Anyway? in an earlier post today, I said I would blog about Joey's first trip to the eye doctor on Wednesday. So here is our adventure as promised! :o)

Well, although Joey is 4 1/2 years old now and has Cornelia de Lange Syndrome, we have never had too much cause to take him to an eye doctor. When he was at the Children's Developmental Clinic in Omaha this summer, the doctor there decided it was time for him to see one as he has struggled with watery, mattery, stuck shut in the morning eyes off and on since he was born. Several opinions have stated that he has clogged tearducts and will need a tearduct probe at some point. His right eye has managed to correct itself but he still has problems with the left eye. Sometimes it is worse than others and looks really sore. This is when we use his eyedrops which is something he hates almost as much as going to the doctor. Anyway, the day turned out to be everything I thought it would be ~ a wealth of whining, crying, and complaining and I knew Joey would be fussy too. :o) Author's note to author's husband: This is the last time I will take Joey to any type of doctor's appointment by myself ~ I'm sure some kind soul out there will volunteer to watch the girls so we can take him together ;o} The first sign of trouble was when about 10 miles out of town Joey decides to do a little stinky in his diaper. I'm thinking okay, surely he's way tired from going to school and he will fall asleep and I can change him when we get there ( I know, bad mommy!!) but this is not the way the plan goes. Joey gets very irritated with me and so I figure I better pull over and change him. This, my friends, was not an easy task. Sometimes Joe will be very good for a diaper change and sometimes not. This was one of the sometimes not times.
Laying him on the car seat and attempting to change his diaper on a country road turned into an all star wrestling match with Joey cleary getting the best of his much larger opponent. After about a 15 minute struggle, I come out victorious ~ getting Joey in a fresh diaper and back in his car seat and getting all the poop wiped up from places poop should probably not be. With this setback I realize that we will most likely be late for the appointment. Great. Our journey continues without any more incidents ~ Joey falls asleep thankfully because he is not the greatest traveler. We have travel time of about 1 1/2 hours to get to Omaha and when we get there I am unable to find the place. Also great. So I call the office and ask for better directions and finally arrive about 20 minutes late. Even greater. There are papers to fill out, insurance cards to show and in the meantime Joey commences to tear apart the waiting room. Two of his favorite activities are climbing on things and knocking things over which does not work well in places that are not "Joey proof". We finally get called to the exam room where you guessed it ~ we wait some more. There are some light switches on the front of the counter that Joey starts to play with (this is also another one of his favorite activities) so I let him because at least he is not knocking anything over. When the doctor comes in, we happen to be in the dark. The doctor is in there for all of 5 minutes and says the nurse will put in some drops to dilate his eyes then we have to wait 20 minutes for that to take effect. So I practically have to put a choke hold on Joey for the nurse to be able to put the drops in his eyes. Then back to the waiting room we go. And I know it was longer than 20 minutes before they called us back in. By this time I am frustrated with the whole situation and tired of spinning in circles trying to keep Joey away from everything he shouldn't be messing with. At least we got back into the room where the light switches are located that he can play with again. Now when the doctor comes back in we visit a little about Joey and his eye problems and I get to try to hold him again while the doc shines some ultraviolet light in his little face. No dice ~ he is fighting me too much. In come the reinforcements. It takes two nurses and myself to hold Joey, and the guy still wasn't able to get that good of a look in his eyes although he got to look long enough to determine that the next step is having a tearduct probe. Okay, fine. This is what I was expecting to hear. So we get ushered into an office to schedule the procedure. There are all kinds of goodies Joey can knock down and break and throw. The gal kindly says there are some toys in a box on the shelf that he can play with. The box consists of Happy Meal toys that hold no value with Joey. So back to keeping him away from everything else. Now I hope I don't sound like I am complaining too much here ~ I love that Joey can climb and play and move as fast as lightning ~ but I will admit in situations like this it is difficult to deal with. Oh, and I had long ago exhausted my supply of snacks and toys I brought from home. Joey is all about explore, explore, explore ~ which is a good thing ~ in certain situations. Well, we manage to get the probe scheduled but not until January. With the holidays coming up the doc's schedule is full until after the first of the year. So we will have to deal with the stuck shut eyes for another couple months. I just pray his vision is good so he won't have to wear glasses. There is no way he would ever keep glasses on his face. Joey's next appointment is on December 4th with a urologist. Any takers?