I've been haunted by an image lately.
My little boy, still, pale and lifeless, lying alone on a hospital bed surrounded by strangers. A tube is down his throat, an IV is in arm, some kind of strange clamp is holding his right eye open as a big machine shoots lasers into him.
Who needs nightmares when this is a reality?
* * * *
Last week, Fève saw his eye specialist, a woman I refer to in my head as the Amazing Doctor Paton (she deserves the full word title, not the abbreviation), and the news was good. The Amazing Doctor Paton thinks that she will be able to save some of the vision in my son's right eye.
After reading the limited amount of information about Coats' disease online (my only source of information about Coats' is the internet; my family doctor had not even heard of the disease), I had accepted the fact that Fève was probably going to go blind in his right eye.
I am totally fine with my son only having one workable eye. It is a minor handicap, if it can even be called that. If that is the most difficult thing life throws at him, then he is an incredibly lucky little dude.
However, one thing I have trouble accepting is the fact that occasionally children die from going under general anaesthetic. If given the choice between my son going blind in one eye or my son dieing, what do you think my choice would be?
My question is: are we tempting fate by agreeing to a bunch of surgeries on our little boy? The whole death by general anaesthetic risk aside, perhaps it is Fève's destiny to go blind; maybe he was meant to lose his eye. Who are we to fuck with Nature's design?
Fève is incredibly lucky that he lives in a world where doctors can do amazing things like save people from going blind, right? I can't refuse surgery on him because I am afraid he might die, right?
Fève's second, and probably not last, surgery is scheduled for sometime in January.
I am sorry, Fate, for tempting you, but I have to do everything possible to save my son's eye.
Right?
Gramma Elf
3 hours ago























