Eye

So, yesterday was a hard day. Jack has a small bump next to his eye that we've been investigating. I took him for an x-ray, which came out normal. Steve took Jack to the eye doctor yesterday, and we found out that the bump by his eye is a benign cyst.

Benign is good, of course, but Jack is going to have to have surgery to have it removed. We will take him to Children's Hospital in a few weeks for a CT scan, then about four weeks after that, he'll have outpatient surgery. The doctor will remove the cyst, make some stitches under the skin, and some on the skin.

Jack will have to wear an eye patch for a couple of days, then we'll have to keep him from messing with his stitches until they're removed a week later. I really don't know how I'm supposed to keep a 1-1/2 year old kid from doing that, and the doctor wasn't much help. He just said, "Well, he'll just have to." Great, how about some information I can use? The good thing is that other than that little moment, Steve really liked the doctor and was comfortable with him. And as Steve said, Jack isn't the first kid to have this happen, so we'll just keep asking for advice from doctors and nurses and eventually we'll get something helpful.

The surgery is not major or serious, and if it were me getting it, I wouldn't be worried at all. But I hate to have Jack go through that. I don't want him to feel scared or in pain. I don't want him to have to be brave when he's such a little kid. But I also know that this is something that has to be done, and that I need to be strong for him. Most of the time I am feeling okay about it, but every once in a while, fear creeps up on me.