Our Summer So Far...

Wow, two weeks of our summer have already flown by!  We didn't do much the first week, we pretty much laid low.  This past week both boys had swim lessons every day and Travis had basketball camp Monday-Thursday.  We will resume the same schedule this week.  On Monday we went to sign Travis up for a basketball league and stumbled upon the Free Lunch program that some of the schools around here are offering this summer.  The boys smelled food, mom saw free, and off we went!  We took advantage of it twice this week.  That makes meal planning so easy! Every day the boys say, "Can we go to free lunch?" It is pretty funny.  We have been to two different schools and they have been pretty full of families eating lunch.   Travis always seems to find somebody he knows from school too. It sure is a nice thing they have to offer.

Now, back to our first week off. I have been going back and forth as to whether to even mention this.  But, after thinking about it I decided to go ahead and write about it.  There might be somebody out there in "blog land" who is facing a similar situation.  A few months ago Daryle and I decided to look into getting some laser surgery done on the birthmark that covers Connor's left eye.  This was a HUGE decision for us.  We always felt that is was no big deal.  We hardly even noticed it at all.  Everybody in our circle of friends knows about it and nobody ever says anything. However, we were starting to realize that when we would go places where people don't know us we were getting a lot of stares and comments. Now I can handle comments from kids because they are just innocently asking what is the matter with his eye.  The ones that were a little more unsettling were the comments from older people. By "older people" I am referring to people over the age of 70.  They would say things like, "Oh no!  What happened to you?"  We would calmly just say, "Oh, it is just a birthmark, he was born with it." Then people would feel really awkward and it was an uncomfortable moment.  (I think a lot of times they felt kind of stupid for asking).  Recently we began having more and more of these moments.  Then, in February, Connor underwent another eye exam under anesthesia to check him for glaucoma.  (He has to have this done several times a year because of the location of his birthmark.  Due to the location and shape of his birthmark he could be at risk for certain syndromes. So far he has been testing negative for everything.) At this time we are believing that this is just a birthmark and there are no signs of anything life threatening.  Each time he has been under anesthesia the anesthesiologist has asked us about doing laser surgery on his birthmark. I usually get a little defensive.  Who do they think they are?  We love him and think he is beautiful. So what if he has this mark? We don't even notice it!  I just calmly say no, not at this time.  I shake my finger at them (in my head of course) and think how dare they!  However, this past February we had an anesthesiologist who had a different tactic.  She asked me if I knew about a certain local doctor who does this surgery. I said no and then she went on to sing his praises. She was sure to tell me that she wasn't trying to suggest he needed it, she just wanted me to know that there was a fabulous doctor in the area and that maybe we should call him up and get an opinion.  After the eye exam our eye doctor told me that I might want to give said doctor a call, he thought I would like him.  He mentioned that he hadn't thought about it before, but that it might be something just to look into.  He also had wonderful things to say about this doctor.  Those two planted the seed in my head that day.  My next obstacle was to convince Daryle.  So, I started doing some research. I came across a video clip from CBS on a ten year old girl who had  a birthmark on her face removed with laser surgery.  In her interview she had commented that she was just tired of people thinking she had been hit in the face.  Her comments really made an impact on me. It almost felt as if that was what Connor might say to me when he was ten years old.  Daryle and I talked and talked and talked about it. We had already been gathering information on this doctor and we found out that he was a pioneer of laser surgery and he was sought out all over the country. I found two different people who had used this doctor for their children had they had fabulous things to say.  In April we (I made Daryle come too since he had lots of questions. I didn't want this decision being placed on my shoulders alone. What if something went wrong?) met with him and decided to move forward. The thing is that you just don't know how many times you will have to have it done. The fewest he has ever done was three times, the most was 16.  Wow. I am just hoping we are towards the bottom number!  On June 2 we went in for our first procedure.  When the doctor came out he said, "Well, don't be alarmed, but he does look like he got whacked with the ugly stick!"  His eye was swollen (it only lasted two days) and he said the marks should clear up in one to two weeks.  Finally after a week and a half I feel comfortable sharing some pictures because we are already seeing a difference.  Here he is when we got home.  One thing I want to say is that he felt NOTHING!  Later that day he looked in the mirror and said, "I got an owie!"  It did not hurt at all. 

He was still groggy from the anesthesia.  It took me a few days to take him anywhere mostly because I was nervous about what people might say.  Now if I thought people made comments before, boy oh  boy did they make comments now! Our doctor warned us to tell people he had just had laser surgery so that people don't feel the need to call CPS. (Evidently he had a family that almost had that happen once! Scary!)  It really did look pretty bad.  Last Tuesday I took the boys to Dairy Queen for some ice cream. You can sort of see how it was healing.

 Well, this one was Travis of course!

 You can see here how it didn't affect him much! It was starting to get lighter. One thing we were told that the darker the better.  If it is dark that means it "took" and you will have a good result.  We were thrilled at how dark it was. AKA: very deep purple!

Here he is today. Still healing but looking much, much better indeed. There are several areas that were pink before that our now just a normal skin color. Amazing!

I took this one to show how it goes/went into his hair line. It is almost completely gone there.

He still has some dark parts, scabs, and areas that still need to heal. I will post some updates as they happen.  In the end we are grateful that insurance was able to cover this and that it is turning out so well.  I really hope that he will appreciate this when he gets older. Believe me, a lot of prayer went into this decision for sure! Since it "took" so well we are hoping we might be able to get this done in 4 (or less) procedures. We will see!  (Fingers, toes, arms and legs are all crossed!  LOL)

This week I hope to get some pictures of basketball camp and swim lessons. It is hard because my hands are always full!  I hope your summer is going well, I know we are having loads of fun here!