Captain’s Log 4104.45: It is day 9 of Jaxon’s eye surgery recovery. The initial house arrest has been lifted, but Jaxon is still on restrictive play. so, what does that mean exactly? Well, that he’s bouncing off the walls, talking a million miles a minute, not sleeping and driving me out of my ever loving mind!!
My mom looked at us the other day and said she wondered who needed to get out more, Jax or me. I vote me! Trying to keep this boy from touching, rubbing and scratching his eye has been stressful in itself. Then there are the drops I have to put in his eyes. Well, I might as well be giving a cat a bath! I think he actually growled and hissed at me one day. He’s cried more in the last 9 days than he did in the first three months of his life. His has been uncharacteristically disgruntled and angry just about everyday. And then it’s just been hard overall just looking at his eye. I was less stressed when he was a newborn! As my mother so colorfully put it, I had stressed myself into looking like the Tin Man walking! The day of the boy’s surgery I could barely walk. I’m not even joking! They let me carrying him into the O.R. and I wasn’t even sure if I could make the whole trip! Perhaps this is why the gastroenterologists suggested I rethink the parenthood thing. The amount of stress I have taken on over the last few weeks has been NUTS!
Now once he goes back to school, even if I don’t really have all the time or money in the world, I have GOT to make some time for myself! I think a mani/pedi and a $30 thai massage is in order. Perhaps a moment of silence with a warm cup of coffee and a fiction novel or a really great short story. Silence. I think I will need to take the school day afternoons as a mommy mini vacation.
I will say that as painful as this recovery has been for Jaxon, he has still maintained his snappy one liners! Here are some Hippo on House Arrest Surgery Recovery Highlights:
“Oh mommy, that was so sweet of you and daddy to take me to my surgery!”
“I want my old eyes back, now!”
“Mom, I fink I have something in my eye. It hurts really bad and I think my eye is just broken. And then like on the udder day I have a frog in my froat. And now my growl and my eye are just so broken!”
“First my eye has to have surgery and get better. Right it’s just so broken!”
“You take the drops!”
For all my complaining, I have to say that I am beyond grateful for Dr. Stacy Pineles and the Jules & Doris Stein Eye Institute at UCLA for everything. This place is truly incredible and they did a great job with Jaxon and his strabismus. And they were amazing with us the morning of the surgery. I am eternally grateful.
