Blue Eyes Crying

Nora has always seemed on the verge of tears -- not because she's perpetually distraught over the state of the world, but because she was born with a blocked tear duct. We'd previously looked into unblocking it when she was about 15 months old (we'd been advised that if it didn't correct itself by one year, we'd need to have a procedure done), but she threw up the morning of the surgery which we took as a sign that we should postpone indefinitely.

Indefinitely turned out to be 3 years of age as our regular pediatrician (who's missed the appointment where we decided to go ahead with the surgery at 15 months and had been horrified that we'd considered it at such a tender age) gave her blessing to try again. Originally scheduled for election day, Hurricane Sandy threw off Kaiser's schedule and so it wasn't until November 8th that Nora finally underwent the knife (or a rather, a metal probe).

Nora's not the best waker-upper, so we were a little concerned how she would respond to being woken up at 7 in the morning without benefit of food or drink per her pre-surgery instructions, but apparently a little The Little Mermaid en route makes everything better. Nora sailed into the ambulatory surgery center telling jokes (such as "Why did the toys cross the road?" whose punchline involves a robot chicken though I was never entirely clear how or why) and being only slightly annoyed by the surgical gown and heart monitor. It wasn't until they started to put her under that she got upset with the morning's adventure (requiring the anesthesiologist, a nurse and myself to hold her down). She woke up equally annoyed about 20 minutes later, but some cuddling and a be-be (as well as the promise of more Little Mermaid when we left) seemed to console her.

We were home by 11 am, where we cuddled on the couch watching some Dora before finally eating some food and taking a long nap. She's back at daycare today and seems fine (although she's had a slight bloody nose and occassional bloody discharge out of her eye, which we were told to expect). We're hoping that this surgery will do the trick as the next one would involve a plastic surgeon and irrigation tubes not to mention a pretty big mommy freak-out session if she has to go through all that again.

(click here for the pictures)