Lydia's tear duct surgery

Ever since birth Lydia has had clogged tear ducts. Her first Dr appointment at 2 weeks I mentioned the green goopy stuff in her eyes. I always got the response "They usually grow out of it by the time they turn 1." Okay, but this is constant and in both eyes and it glues her eyes shut when she's sleeping....

Anyway, every Dr appointment I mention it and every time they say "she'll grow out of it." At her three month appointment her new Dr prescribed a prescription to put in her eyes in case it was an infection. (I guess she got a good look at all that green goop) She went through 3 different treatments of that prescription, but nothing of note ever happened. Finally at her 9 month appointment her Dr recommended seeing an eye specialist. He in turn recommended an even more specialized specialist in Chapel Hill who had pioneered a surgery of inserting tubes down the tear ducts to drain all that stuff down through the nasal cavity like it was supposed to be doing.

Well Lydia had her surgery this past Friday the 11th. We drove over to Durham Regional Hospital, a Duke University facility. I was a bit apprehensive, mostly worried about the aftermath of a baby having gone through a traumatic ordeal than the surgery itself. She couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight the night before. We were at the hosiptal at 9:00 am ready for a 10:15 appointment. She didn't end up going back for the surgery until 11:15 so she was one hungry baby. (Two other young girls had the same surgery before her, one 9 months and the other probably 18 months)

What a sweet girl she was though the whole time. All the nurses and people walking by thought that she was just the cutest thing ever. I didn't want her crawling on the hospital floor so I walked around the hall with her in my arms a lot while we were waiting. She made a lot of friends :)

Her surgery lasted an hour, during which I went down to the cafeteria for some lunch. They had given me a pager for when she was out of surgery. Right around 12:30 I all of a sudden got very apprehensive and walked back to the nurses station. The nurse said they hadn't heard anything yet but she would probably be out shortly. I asked to use the phone to call my husband and as I was telling him "she isn't out yet" the nurse got a page that Lydia was on her way over. Good timing I guess.

I was ready w/ a bottle of juice for her because I knew she would be starving. She was crying a bit (they told me to expect that) but looked great. I had been expecting bandages over her eyes or something but the only thing indicating that she had surgery was the IV in her foot and the monitors still stuck to her chest (oh and she had a bit of blood in her nose).


We stayed in her recovery little room for about half an hour, letting her calm down and rest and eat. She did throw up once which scared me a bit but after she got a good burp out from guzzling down that bottle she was much better. She wasn't going to sleep like the nurses expected so they discharged us and we drove home (she was able to sleep in the car). I got home just in time to pick Cooper up from the bus.

We're moving to Canada!!

Well it seems like the nomadic Martin clan is continuing it's adventures! Last June we all pulled up our roots in our lovely Southern California to take a temporary job in North Carolina. It was quite sudden and it has turned out to be such a blessing. We have thoroughly enjoyed our east coast/southern experience and now we are heading out for a Great Northern adventure!

The job that Martin took last June was for a bank called RBC Centura. The RBC stands for Royal Bank of Cananda and Centura was a local southern bank that RBC bought out. (The local stadium in Raleigh is the RBC Center, that's how big it is out here) Well now it seems the bank is phasing out the Centura part and will be known as RBC Royal Bank. (Royal Bank of Canada Royal Bank, redundant I know). Well Martin's original position was only supposed to last 6 months which would have been this past Dec 31st. He got a 4 month contract extension at the last minute last year which puts us at April 30th. We had had no word about extending his contract again so whenever I heard questions about our "plans" I say "as far as we know we will come back to Cali after Cooper gets out of school in June".

Well, that was until yesterday. Having had no wind of it beforehand Martin was offered a full time position as a Business Systems Analyst with RBC (not just with the contract company he has been working through) up in Canada. To be honest it is a relief considering how the banking/mortgage market has been lately. Martin told me the other day some statistic about 30 something % of office space in the downtown Irvine, CA area is not in use because so many of the businesses are going under. Scary stuff. So now in June we're off on our next adventure. This one taking us to Montreal, Canada.



Oh, and April Fools!!!!