As you may or may not have known from this post, Kaden is experiencing his first "bump" in the road through life. His eye wasn't healing the way we thought it would, so we scheduled an appointment and they saw us right away. After describing some things we noticed, the doctor pushed really hard on the swollen area under his eye, as if to pop whatever was underneath, but wasn't successful. Then we heard the news... he quickly said we'd have to go to MUSC in Charleston, SC, to have a specialist check it out. He thought it looked like a hemangioma (don't look that up if you don't know what it is... scary pictures). Then he scared the crap out of us even more when he said "they might just wrap him up and probe it". WHAT?!?!... our little baby, probed?!?! Or he could possibly have surgery. At this point, Kirby and I didn't know what to think or say...but we were both super shocked!
This was our first (and I know it won't be our last) "bump" in the road. I walked out thinking the worst, and scared to death for Kaden. We couldn't imagine our son going through something that would hurt him or even worse, surgery.
From there, we were scheduled an appointment for the following week (Friday, August 17) to have it checked out. Our little man did a great job on the 2 1/2 hour drive there.. only crying when he was hungry. We stopped once each way to feed and change a dirty diaper.
{diaper change in the back seat}
The appointment went very well and wasn't nearly as bad as we had thought it could have been. There was no "wrapping and probing" and no talk of surgery. They did pull on his eye, flashed a few lights at it, and put some dilation drops in them too, but overall not too bad.
After asking several questions to the very patient doctor, the bottom line is... it is a hemangioma (a cluster of small blood vessels, aka a "strawberry mark"), but it looks good. They checked and found out it wasn't affecting his vision either. As long as it doesn't grow rapidly, we go back in 3 months to have them check it again. If all goes well, it will go away on its own, but may take 3-5 years. So hopefully all we'll have to worry about is a puffy and purplish eyelid for a few years. I think we can handle that.
We are very thankful it was nothing worse. We pray for his continued health in this area. We are glad this "bump in the road" was just that... a bump.
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3 comments:
Emerson has an hemangioma on the top of her head. I had never even heard of them until hers started growing. I'm glad to hear that Kaden got a good report about his!
My daughter has a strawberry hemangioma on her chin. She will be two in Spetember and it has recently started to fade, I hardly notice it anymore.
My daughter (she's 3 1/2) has a fairly large hemangioma near her collar bone. I've blogged about it several times before and done quite a bit of research. Her's is bigger than most of them end up being and we still probably have a few years before it goes away. I was like you at first - really scared and not happy about her having a bump in the road so early. Now that we're all used to it, I can't imagine her without it!
I think it's great that you guys have a plan for watching it to figure out the best way to treat it. That's definitely the best route to go!
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