Tears of Joy
So Kayla has had a plugged tear duct that I noticed when she was just 2 weeks old. The general theory is that it will correct itself in time (typically by 1 year). However, it has not. So today we went and saw a Pediatric Ophthalmologist. The Doctor was extremely nice... but with a combination of his big shiny lights, a desire to look in her eyes, eye drops to dilate and the "glow in the dark gel" to watch how they drained made her very skeptical... and very sad/scared. We had to hold her down to get the drops in; David had the body and arms, I had the head, and the doctor helped hold the head and got it in the eye. Awesome. He actually wasn't able to get the greatest readings on her because she was so upset about everything and she didn't want to be near him with her eyes open. But from what we were describing to him as symptoms and the little he was able to see, he feels that her duct is probably not completely blocked but rather just very narrow. So it is only partially blocked. The tests they did were actually pretty cool. They use a glow in the dark gel and then a black light to see how her tears were draining and if they made it into the nasal passage. Anyway, he prescribed her an eye drop with steroids in it (to reduce swelling) and we have to give her eye drops 2x a day for 2 weeks and after the drops we massage the duct after giving the drops (his analogy: push on it like you are using a plunger in a toilet and trying to get some liquid through). So, yeah, the eye drops are evil. I have a phobia of people touching my eyes or putting something in them and it makes my eyes tear up just thinking about it – that does not help matters! We did the first dose tonight and it was rather traumatic for all of us (me and Kayla especially). The drop wouldn't come out of the bottle and Kayla was scared to death at us holding her down. We'll have to get much more efficient about this process... hopefully she'll get used to it and not be so very upset, but I won't hold my breath.
Anyway.... when her duct is plugged, people often say to me, "Aw, she's crying" when she is clearly not crying. She is smiling and happy as can be. She is just shredding a tear because of the blockage. It drives me crazy when people do this (I think it happens mostly when we are on a plane, for whatever reason) and I feel I have to explain to them that she isn't crying it's just a blocked duct. David told me I should just say, "It's tears of joy!" and walk away!! I thought that was priceless! :)