Here's a quick update from The Dad...

We took Joli to the hospital for a "follow-up", where they put her under general anesthesia and closely examined both of her eyes. The enucleated eye (enucleated = eyeballless) looked fine and Dr. Mukai said the healing process was complete. Woot-Woot!

They also examined her "good" left eye and saw no signs of tumor. WOOT-WOOT!! Dr. Mukai said he wasn't really expecting to see anything because in most restinoblastoma cases involving two eyes, the second tumor almost always forms before the patient is two and a half years old. Nonetheless, for the next year, Joli will have to go in for "checks" every three months.

Which means more anesthesia. Blah.

Let me tell you something about Joli and anesthesia... I love my daughter... more than anything... but, when she wakes up from anesthesia... she's downright EVIL.

Some of you guys have been around and witnessed it, but nothing compares to yesterday. It was so bad, the nurse in the recovery room was rushing us to get Joli out of there. Joli wasn't in pain or anything, but they'd put some "drops" in her eye to dilate her pupils during the exam and they made things a little "blurry". I'm sure that freaked Joli out, leading to her outburst. But, man, I had to carry her all the way back to the car. She was wriggling the entire time and it was like she had superhuman strength and her screaming was at piercing volume.

It was like carrying around a pint-sized, gamma-irradiated, Mariah Carey.

But, it was all worth it to hear that she was healthy.

The doctors also took a mold of her eye while she was sedated. It looks like Joli will have her prosthetic eye ready by October 26th!!

COOL MOMENT: While in the waiting room we met a four year old, retinoblastoma survivor. She had been in the waiting room with us for almost an hour, before her mom came over and said "Is your little girl gettting fitted for a prosthetic eye too?" When we said yes, she called her daughter over and told us that her little girl's left eye was a prosthetic. She got it the prosthetic when she was only 21 months old. Liza and I were shocked. Even though we've both been doing all this research on prosthetic eyes, we would have never known if the mom hadn't told us. It looked so natural.

Love== The Dad

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