Part 2 - PHPV....huh?

Persistent Hyperplastic Primary Vitreous.  That's what the opthalmalogist said caused the cataract.  And then the thousands of questions started piling into my head. What in the world is PHPV? What causes it? Why my little girl?  A great website that explains it can be found here.   In a nutshell PHPV occurs when the eye does not develop properly.  The eye is filled with jelly that becomes clear during development.  In a PHPV eye this jelly, for some unknown reason, remains hazy.  I bombarded each doctor I met with the question of what caused this? What did I do or not do while I was pregnant that made this happen.  Each doctor answered me the same way...it was nothing I did....it was just plain old bad luck....it just occurs by chance (1-3 in 10000 to be precise)...a glitch in development.  Unfortunately there are other complications from PHPV (also known as Persistent Fetal Vasculature).  The eye can be smaller.  A cataract can form.  Nicole has both.  We were told that she needed to have surgery to remove the hazy jelly and cataract in hopes of improving her vision.  So then, when my poor little Pumpkin was a mere 4 weeks old, she headed to the operating room. 
That was a hard day.  No new mother wants to hand over their newborn.  So there we sat in the OR waiting room, at some ungodly early hour, waiting for that moment.  The OR nurse was so sweet.  I'll never forget her face.  She bundled Nicole up in her little purple blanket that had been her sister's (Thanks Tatie Johanne!) and walked through those double doors with her.  And we were left to wait.



Just before going in to the OR.  Her surgeon marked the eye to be worked on.

  It took 2.5 hours.  At 1130am the surgeon walked into the waiting room with his entourage of doctors and took us into a back room.  He told us everything went well.  The cataract was removed.  Unfortunately, she suffered a retinal detachment.  He told us he could not find the detachment but treated the area he thought it was in.  As a result he could not guarantee that it was fixed and we would have to follow up in the coming weeks.  In the meantime we were to position Nicole with her left side down to keep the gas bubble in place.  (A gas bubble is used to stent the retina into position.)  We spent the night in hospital for observation.  The next day we were given the ok to go home and so began the relentless eyedrops....3 kinds in some combination every 2 hours.



Post op lensectomy/vitrectomy





Leftover "makeup" from Dr. H's examination the next day.