Living with guilt, and counting our blessings

It's been four months since Kai's injury, and we've made it through two major surgeries and over 30 visits to four different doctors.  By all accounts, he is a thriving and vibrant (and very lucky!) little boy.  Despite the skull fracture, there was absolutely no injury to his brain, and we feel extremely blessed that this is the case.  His right eye was not so fortunate.  We learned about a month after the initial injury that his retina had detached, so he had surgery at the end of August to re-attach it.  Now that it's been about 3 months since the surgery, we had another follow-up appointment with the pediatric opthamologist, who has encouraged us to patch his "good" eye for 3 hours each day.  Apparently this will help his brain to realize that it needs to try to use the right eye again.  Looking at him, you wouldn't know that there was a problem--his eye tracks and looks just fine.  But when we patch it, it is clear that at least right now he doesn't have vision in his right eye.  It is really hard to do the patching each day because it brings back all of those awful feelings of guilt associated with the accident.  Also, he doesn't like not being able to see for three hours a day (imagine that!).  But we're trying.  And we're REALLY glad that Pla Shee is such a loving big brother, because it takes a lot of energy to entertain Kai when he can't see! 



We go back to the doctor at the end of January to reassess things and to get fitted for glasses.  Kai's a big fan of accessories, so I think glasses will go over well.  :)