I received a call today around 1:30 pm surprisingly since I had already received the morning update telling us Lucas was doing so well that they thought they'd be moving him to the crib today. They told us he'd be getting his eye exam too. Well, the call at 1:30 was to ask for consent to do immediate laser eye surgery. The eye doctor found that the blood vessels in both of Lucas's eyes were growing abnormally, putting his eyes at risk for retinal detachment & subsequent blindness. He went into surgery around 5:30 pm and came out at about 7:30 pm. He had been placed under general anesthesia and was put back on the ventilator. The plan now is for them to ween him off the ventilator tonight and hopefully have him off tomorrow. They won't know if the surgery was successful for another 2-3 weeks. If the blood vessels continue growing, they will cause more problems. Lucas will most likely have problems with his peripheral vision because his blood vessels had not finished growing to those parts of the eyes. There is a 75% chance that the surgery was successful at stopping the blood vessels and preventing blindness, but he will need frequent eye exams for a while. Baby boy might be needing glasses sooner than he normally would have, but both mommy and daddy have bad vision, so it was a given.
Now we're hoping for a quick recovery with no infection and that he's among the 75% that don't need any more surgery. If he's in the 25% he'll be needing more invasive surgery that goes beyond laser surgery,
On a positive note: Lucas was 16.15 inches long and his head circumference was 12.35 inches yesterday. He's not gaining much weight as he used to in a given day but he broke 2000 grams and weighed 2003, or 4 lbs 7 oz yesterday. He likely lost some weight today because of the surgery. I will keep everyone posted.
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