the underwear drawer

leukocoria

"Hey hon," Joe called out to me yesterday afternoon from the computer, "tell me what you think of this picture." I went over to take a look at what appeared to be an e-mailed family photo from Christmas. And here's what I saw. I think if there's one picture that could freak out an ophthalmology resident and a (former) pediatrics resident equally, it's a picture of their child that looks like this:






MICHELLE
(Putting on her best "not freaking out" voice)
It's probably nothing.

JOE
Yeah, but still.

MICHELLE
I think it's the way he's angled, so that the flash is straight on with the optic nerve on the left. Probably.

JOE
Yeah, but still.

MICHELLE
And I think I remember a picture of him from a month ago with red-eye in both eyes.

JOE
Yeah, but we don't want to sit on this. I want to take him to the [University Hospital] eye clinic tomorrow morning.

MICHELLE
Isn't it closed?

JOE
I could easily open it.

MICHELLE
You want to dilate him and examine his eyes?

JOE
Did you see the picture? I think we need to.


Notice that neither of us actually said the word for what was really freaking us out. Because you know, saying bad things makes them come true. So we just looked at the picture and looked at each other and looked at Cal and didn't say bad things even though we were both thinking them and getting scared.

We didn't wait until Sunday morning to drive up to the [University Hospital] eye clinic. What we did end up doing was taking him to a pediatric ophthalmologist that same evening. Namely, my mom. She was at her office seeing patients, and said that we could come by around 6pm. Which, one subway ride later, we did. Grandma to the rescue again. (Yes, I know, we're so lucky with our ability to Access Health Care that it is ridiculous.)

So at the office, we put in the dilating drops and both my mom and Joe took a look into Cal's eyes with the indirect ophthalmoscope, with the headlight and the lenses and the whole deal. Joe especially took a good long look, especially towards the nasal side of the left eye, where the pupil was white in the picture. Normal. Cal was even reasonably cooperative, only crying a little bit with the drops (they sting) and remaining reasonably still for the eye exam, only protesting a little bit at the end. Normal. Thank god.

I guess that's part of being a parent, worrying much, much more about someone else than you worry about yourself. This won't be the last time that we have a scare either, not by a long shot. What about the first time he falls and hits his head, the first time has a high fever, the first time he gets a big bruise that just doesn't seem to be healing as fast as it should. Why didn't anyone tell me there would be this much worrying? This was not in the package insert!

I could stay up all night worrying about Cal. And there are books and newspapers full of things for me to worry about. But what can you do? You can't keep your child in a hermetically sealed glass box, like a Beanie Baby or the pope. All you can do is love your kid and protect them without becoming That Crazy Overprotective Parent, and, barring the ability to "not worry" (which is everyone's well-intentioned advice, but impossible to actually achieve), just try to make sure that you're doing all the worrying on the down-low so that your kid never has to.

Currently reading: Just finished "Stolen Lives." Probably won't start "The Year of Magical Thinking" for a few days at least, since I'm on call tomorrow night and will probably be too tired to read on the subway the next morning, but who knows, if I don't get called to do a kidney transplant or some big Neuro case overnight, I might get some rest.