What Now?

I've posted before that we have been dealing with an issue concerning Baby Girl's eye. She has a vascular malformity on her right side which makes her look like she has a permanent black eye. It's essentially a clump of blood vessels where they shouldn't be and if left untreated and grow and damage other areas of her eye.



We went yesterday to our follow up appointment with the specialist since the CT scan was done a couple weeks ago. Originally the plan was they would view to see where it was at and decide if surgery should be done now or wait until a little later. Our appiontment yesterday didn't go like that at all.

The specialist said that most of the malformity is in her eyelid and appears to be slowly growing back into the eye area. It isn't something that would go away like a regular hemangioma would. This type would continue to grow as she grows and begin to damage other areas. At this time since she is still so small (12lbs at 4 months old) he is really wanting to avoid surgery for awhile. So instead he wants to try a minimum of 3 laser treatments followed by a second CT scan to see if the laser treatments appear to be working. If they are then we would continue with laser treatments until it is either gone or it appears to no longer be working, which at that point surgery would be the only option. The treatments would be done every 4 weeks with the first one starting sometime in the next couple weeks.

Sounds great right??? No surgery and a much less invasive option would be the ideal. However in our case because she is so young she doesn't understand that she has to lay completely still during the procedure. So to ensure that she doesn't move it would require her being put to sleep under general anesthesia every time.

Something in my mommy sense is making this plan of action not sit well with me. The idea of having to go through the ordeal of giving her an IV and putting her to sleep every month just doesn't seem right. I know how hard it was for them to put an IV in her last time. It took them 4 tries to get a successful one. I know how sick she got afterwards. We're not 100% sure if it was because of the anesthesia but it seems an odd coincidence that a perfectly healthy baby becomes horribly ill with in hours of having it done.

So now I don't know what to do. She has her 4 month well check on Monday and I plan to discuss everything with her pediatrician whom I love. I really want to know from her opinion the side affects and possible issues with having to do this so often. What other options there may be and so forth. Even Mr. X isn't thrilled with the idea of Baby Girl having to go through this and is wanting to go to a different specialist to get a 2nd opinion.

So for now this is where we stand.