Up and down. Repeat.

I've been up and down and back and forth about Ev's eye. I have some moments where I actually feel grateful ~ that we aren't living in a third-world country, or in 1700, where/when Ev could die from something like this. When we got home tonight I felt angry and disappointed. Leaving for the long trip to Philadelphia five days ago, I'd hoped for both a better long-term prognosis for his eye as well as a more palatable treatment plan for now. 

The night I started this blog, Hubs and I fought some, both dealing with our feelings over the tarsorrhaphy. The next day, yesterday, we both admitted that we were hoping, with prayer and a lot of lubrication, the eye might heal on its own before surgery is scheduled (probably sometime next week).

All day today, in the car driving home, we discussed various options, and whether the tarsorrhaphy is truly the best/only plan. How frustrating it is that nerve growth factor drops seem to work but aren't available here in the U.S. and aren't approved by the FDA; if we did decide to order them from another country, could child services take Ev away from us, citing parental negligence or violation of some stupid FDA law? We talked about how maybe this serum that uses nerve growth factor extracted from a patient's blood could work, but Ev would hate to have his blood drawn. How if we offered our eyes to God, maybe one of us could lose an eye and Ev's eye would be healthy again. Whose eye would be more beneficial to Ev? Hubs' eye has better sight but mine is the exact same color as Ev's.

We discussed, again, what if any role breast milk played in staving off epithelial degeneration when Ev was a baby. How many times did I drop that into his eye, only to see the redness disappear within hours? Doesn't breast milk also contain nerve growth factor and that insulin growth stuff? (Yes.) Should we put that in his eye? What about colostrum? My good friend just had a baby. How inappropriate would it be to ask her for some colostrum (answer: very).

We got 4G on our Kindle Fire last night, so I read medical articles for hours in the car while poor Ev sat, bored, in his car seat, his eye looking redder than ever, the white spot still covering the entire pupil. It really breaks my heart that he can't see out of the eye right now. This whole thing breaks my heart, but especially knowing it could have been avoided if we'd known his cornea had no feeling and we should keep it lubricated at all times.

It's all just so frustrating and sad.

My sister is sending us some breast milk, which we think could maybe help between now and surgery. If his eye healed, we wouldn't have to do the surgery. True, the sugar in breast milk could invite infection, but we have strong antibiotics for that very purpose, and besides, breast milk has natural antibiotics. Wonder if we will actually have the balls to put it in his eye. We've done it so many times before, but that was before he had an ulcer. Maybe we should just order human growth hormone from overseas. Maybe if I wake up every hour or two to re-lubricate the eye tonight.

Maybe.