[summer.phillips]

the drs have tentatively planned to do cole's cataract surgery on tuesday march 10th.  we will still have to go back next tuesday to make sure though.  doing it that tuesday would be great because then he'd only have to miss one day of school since they are out that thursday and friday and the whole following week for spring break.  we have learned that after the surgery with his new plastic lens he will only be able to see far away and will need bifocals to see up close. i was confused by that at first but the dr explained that the natural lens in the eye is able to focus both up close and far away but a plastic lens is only able to focus on one or the other.  i had never thought about that before but it makes sense!  please continue to pray that we will get to do the surgery on the 10th, that everything goes well removing the cataract and that his retina was not damaged by the infection.  God continues to hold us close as He not only reshapes cole's vision but ours as well. it seems that we will all have new eyes when this is over with.   

cole is continuing to improve, he is opening his right eye more and more each day. we saw the dr. yesterday and he thinks the infection is all gone out of his inner eye and only the inflammation remains. cole is still not seeing out of his right eye and we will not know why until the inflammation clears up. we will see the dr again on friday morning and we are hopeful that the inflammation will be cleared up enough so that they can tell what is causing him not to see. in the mean time cole is enjoying playing marbles with granny and his new Nintendo ds without a cracked screen from nonnie. cole gets to go back to school on monday and he is very excited about that! brent and i continue to remain hopeful that the vision will return to his right eye but we are also trying to make arrangements for his needs at school in the mean time. please pray for us as we navigate these uncharted waters with the eye dr's and the school.

today the weight of all this could not be avoided any longer. it is hard to let myself feel this because i get so easily overwhelmed. my gut instinct for problems that are too overwhelming to fix is to work around them, or avoid them all together...i can not, however, think of a way to avoid or work around this problem... so, i guess the time has come for me to figure out a new game plan. i must be difficult to teach because God usually has to create scenarios like this where i can't dodge the reality in order to move me. He has to take me to places where i am at the end of myself in order to rely solely on Him. it feels uncomfortable in this place but i know that as i let myself feel and live here, the peace and comfort will come.

we got to bring cole home today! he did an awesome job this morning and let the dr get a good look in his eye so we didn't have to do an exam under anesthesia! the skin around his eye still looks pretty bad but the infection inside of his eye seems to be clearing up.
we will be going a couple more times this week to the dr to make sure everything continues to improve. once everything is healed he will for sure need to get a tube/shunt implant put in his right eye to control the glaucoma. he is still not able to see anything out of his right eye, this could be because of debris behind his lens from the infection or he could be forming a cataract. it is too early to tell exactly what is causing him to not be able to see but they are still hopeful that his retina was not damaged.
cole has really been amazing through all of this, he has not been worried or angry, he has hardly even cried. he was the most worried about the iv! today he said that he was "excited to go home and start his new life." i asked him what he meant by his new life and he said "mom, you know, my new way of seeing!" he amazes me.
he has to stay home from school this week per dr's orders so we will spend this week trying to figure out what kind of help he will need at school while his right eye is not working. it will be a learning process for both of us! thanks so much for praying :)

here is a pic of coler taken today. as you can see his eye is still pretty red and irritated. he is still not opening it very much. the dr saw him briefly today and said that he thought cole was looking a little bit better. he wants cole to be seen in the opthamology clinic in the morning and if they can't get a good enough look they will do an exam under anesthesia tomorrow afternoon. during the exam they will determine weather he looks good enough to go home or if not they will give him another interocular injection of the antibiotics. so...if everything looks good we will be going home tomorrow or tuesday. If they have to give him another injection it will be a few more days. cole was in good spirits today and was awake alot more. he is using his left eye to see with and getting around pretty well so that is a blessing. we still have a long road ahead of us but so far so good. thanks for keeping us in your prayers.

i think my blog will be the easiest way to keep everyone updated on cole so keep checking back here to see how we all are doing. i will explain everything the best i can!
[background]
as most of you know cole was born with glaucoma. he has had several surgeries to get his glaucoma under control. his left eye has two tube-shunt implants that keep his pressures under control however visually he can not see very well out of his left eye. he has always relied heavily on his right eye to see with. the pressures in his right eye are controlled with a bleb which is essentially a hole in his eye put there to control his glaucoma and because he has a hole in his eye we have always had to worry about infection in that eye. any time his right eye looks the least bit red we have to get him into the eye dr to make sure there is not an infection in his inner eye, we have done this his entire life.
[what went wrong]
this past tuesday cole stayed home from school with a fever...no other real symptoms just a random fever that did not come back after tuesday morning. so wednesday he went to school like normal and his eyes were fine. at about 3pm on wednesday i got a call from the nurse at cole's school saying that his right eye was red and hurting him. we picked him up and took him straight to his eye dr and he told us that the infection had not gotten into his inner eye yet so they started him on his high powered antibiotic eye drops and sent us home with an appointment to come back in thursday morning to check it again. at his appointment thursday morning they discovered that the infection had spread into his inner eye. cole was then admitted to the hospital and had a surgery that evening where he got two high powered antibiotic injections into the back of his eye to take care of the inner eye infection. he is also getting antibiotic eye drops every hour around the clock to treat the infection on the outside of his eye and he is also getting iv antibiotics to treat the tissue that surrounds his eye.
they are keeping him in the hospital until the infection goes away and we are told that if everything goes away quickly that will be monday, if it takes longer to clear up the infection we will be here longer. the dr's looked at him yesterday and today and said that things have not gotten worse which is a good sign. they will reevaluate him again on monday to determine if he will need another round of interocular injections or not and for how long he will need to stay on all the other antibiotics.
our primary concern right now is to get the infection cleared up as soon as possible. Once that is gone we can assess the damage and go from there. The dr's have told us that there is still hope that the infection did not harm his vision and he could still see just as well out of his right eye as he did before but we will just have to wait and see. right now cole says he can't see out of his right eye and since he can't see well with his left eye he just wants to keep them both closed all the time. we are trying to encourage him to do things and use his left eye because the more he uses it the stronger it will get. today he played a couple of games of trouble using his left eye to read the numbers and move. he also walked to the play room and helped papa but together his new bionicle. he told me this evening that he thought he could see a little better out of his left eye now so that is a good thing.
[what to pray for]
the infection to go away quickly
that there was no damage done by the infection
that cole would use his left eye more
that his left eye would improve visually

brent and i are trying to take things one day at a time. cole handles this better than we do in many ways. we worry about how he will react if the vision does not come back in his right eye. how will he play and read and go to school and ride a bike. cole does not seem to be worried at all. i take comfort in that, i see God in that.