Here is a run down on the situation with Ben. Excuse any typos or mispellings...just wanted to get this out ASAP and when I had a minute of Ben sleeping.
We have no idea how Ben's eye got injured or when. Could of happened many ways because he throws toys and hits his forehead hard with his firsts when angry/frustrated - could have hit his eye instead. Anyway, I noticed on Wednesday his eye was bloodshot, but nothing too major. Yesterday it was stlll bloodshot and actually looked a little swollen. I thought maybe his allergeries were bothering him. Then around 6pm yesterday, I noticed his iris looked half filled with blood. I called our doctor on call and as I was describing it to him, I looked at Ben's eye again and now it was completely filled with blood and you couldn't even see his pupil and it seemed to be giving him a lot of pain. I won't bore you with the 6 hours in the Emergercy Room at Childrens or all the tests they had to perform. Ultimately, we were told he had a hyphema - eye trauma that causes bleeding in the eye. We had two options, admit him, put this metal cheese grater looking patch on him and keep him sedetated and follow him for the next 3-5 days to make sure pressure didn't get worse in his eye OR take him home, keep him sedated, on bed rest and put same patch on and bring him in daily for eye pressure tests, including on the weekend. The main reason they are wanting the daily tests with optho is because he can't tell us if it starts feeling worse or hurts him. And the eye patch is because they are extremely worried about him hitting his eye again and causing a rebleed, which could ultimately cause him to go blind in that eye. They know the options aren't good fpr a disabled child who doesn't understand, but they kept on stressing the severity of the situation not giving us any other options. We choose option 2 because Ben is deathly afraid of the hopstial and I didn't want to put him through that. As far as the patch, he wouldn't keep it on for even 5 seconds AFTER being on a strong dose of Valium AND it being around midnight and he was exhausted. He just kept on ripping it off. We ended up taking him home without it on and I'm committing myself, our nursing, my husband, my mom and anyone else around him to be watching him and sitting by him 24-7 to grab his arm if he tries to hit his head. He is also getting two different kinds of drops, steriod drops which have to be given every 2 hours around the clock - which even if he wore the patch, taking it off every 2 horus to apply drops isn't exactly easy. The other drops are strong dilating drops to keep his eye dilated so it doesn't have to work and cause more bleeding. And the hospital wasn't allowed to send us home with Valium so we had to find a pharmacy to fill that RX when we got home after midnight. We will get a call this morning on when we need to go to clinic to get checked out today. I'm thankful we have one day of going to clinic instead of having to wait in the Emergency Room like we will on the weekend. I'm so worried they are going to insist he be admitted once they learn he hasn't been wearing his patch. Oh, and time frame to get better is anywhere from 5 days to weeks.
1 comment:
Wow, that is a lot going on! I hope he is closer to the 5 day recoup vs. the weeks. And I hope he keeps his arms away from his head. Sounds like you are in for a long week...at least. Hoping everything turns out well.
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