I just read the wonderful story Danielle wrote in comments and it reminded me of a similar experience we had at the hospital for Teagans eye surgery.
As I’ve said, Teagan had eye surgery a week & a half ago. As I walked away from my daughter to go to the waiting room (one of the hardest moments of my life so far) I was crying and nervous; basically a big mess. No surprise there, which one of us wouldn’t be!! When we sat down I noticed a couple casually drinking coffee, joking around, and checking their email on their matching Mac’s. I’d had noticed them earlier, they had a boy about 12-14 years old. The first thought that went through my head was “how can these parents be so calm and casual while their son is in surgery? “What jerks!” Then it struck me!!!What has this family been through that has made a couple hour outpatient procedure such a non event? Painful treatments? Long hospital stays? Risky procedures? How lucky am I that a routine day surgery is such a traumatic experience!
In the end, it doesn’t make the experience my family has had to go through any easier. If I had to do it over again I will still be just as emotional when we found out Teagan needed glasses, patching or surgery. Still, it is a nice reminder that I am very lucky. My child is healthy, smart, and active. While these eye care issues have been frustrating and disappointing at times, at least they are not tragic. I guess today I’m grateful for glasses.
For Little Eyes 
I like how you put that “how lucky I am that a routine day surgery is such a traumatic experience.”
This is a tension that I struggle with, and try to keep a good balance with on this blog. It doesn’t matter why your child has glasses, this is hard. Vision is important, and we shouldn’t minimize what we’re going through. But on the other hand, I think it is important to keep a sense of perspective. Many of us have kids with *correctable* vision, even if the correction is lenses, and that is something for which we should be very thankful.
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Absolutely don’t feel like you aren’t entitled to your own feelings. It doesn’t matter what other families are going through, it only matters what yours is going through. When my Emma had to have an MRI, I held it together until I got outside the room after they knocked her out and then I completely fell apart. When we found out Ellie had a kidney problem, I cried like a baby. What is routine to the staff or to other families isn’t to me, or to many people and it is freaking scary.
And no one, ever, ever wants to be told that there is something wrong with their child, no matter how fixable it is. Emma’s little lesion in her brain (from being premature) still weighs on me. Some days, I hate that Sam is in glasses, and pray that he won’t end up with any of the other eye problems that run in my family.
Sure, glasses are a minor thing. The blip in Emma’s brain isn’t affecting her intellect at all. Ellie out grew her kidney problem.
But still, it made me sad to know that my kids had or have something “wrong” with them. Yes, I can be thankful that none of it has been anything serious, but it didn’t make dealing with it any les stressful at the time.
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I hope no one thinks that my post was intended to imply that we should not be hurt, confused, disappointed or even devastated by what our little ones have to go through. I’ve gone through, and continue to go through each one of those emotions frequently. It is not fair that our kids have to deal with this stuff! When Teagan was born, I certainly didn’t anticipate a need to think about eye care until she was entering school (a costly mistake when she was not added to our vision plan). When I left the PO with our first prescription I was in tears! For days I agonized over how to handle it. I went through the same cycle each time I found out that a treatment plan had failed and a new one would be started. I don’t apologize for those feelings and no one should. I love that girl more than words can explain and something as little as a scraped knee can break my heart.
My only intent was to share a story of how a situation I observed helped me deal with the situation I was in. No more, no less. I truly apologize if anyone thought I was trying to minimize the feelings brought on by each one of our unique situations.
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Nope, I think you wrote really nicely about knowing that you’d still be emotional if you got the news today, and that’s ok. Like samsmama, and probably like everyone reading this, I hated hearing that there was something wrong with child.
I think that for me, this is just something I think about a lot in the context of this blog. I’ve been trying to write a short guest post about little four eyes for a parenting blog, and I feel like my writing keeps coming out sounding whiny, so it’s just something that’s been bugging me, but it’s all because of me and my inability to write clearly, not anything I’ve read here at all. I’m also sorry if I came across as dismissive because that’s not what I meant at all.
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No, I didn’t think you you were saying we shouldn’t acknowledge our feelings. I was trying to reinforce what you were saying.
Shoot, my own ophthalmologist is guilty of telling me to be glad that my glaucoma is easily controlled and to stop complaining about not being able to wear my contact any more because I look cute in glasses. I don’t wanna look cute in glasses! I want to look cute without them!
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Update: This morning I noticed the nose pad on Teagan’s glasses is broken again. Wednesday I was “grateful for glasses”…. today I’m back to hating their guts 😉
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group hug! (I’ve always wanted to say that)
Don’t get me started on my own glasses. I love my glasses, and now I love wearing them, but that’s only because I’ve grown to love them over the years. Luckily (?) I have dark circles under my eyes most of the time, which the glasses do a good job of hiding, so I look better with glasses than without. I’d still rather look good without glasses.
edited: Teagan’s Mom, oh no! Those little nose pieces are by far the worst.
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It’s great to see a blog dedicated to this subject–I started wearing glasses in kindergarten, and was the only kid in school with them for a couple of years, and it really felt like a stigma, which I think led to my refusing to wear them for a good bit of my early adulthood–until headaches forced me to reevaluate that.
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