At CHOP

We are here at CHOP. We arrived yesterday afternoon around 3:00 and shortly after the ophthalmologist came to look at Brandon's eyes. The part of his eye that is affected is zone 2 and it is a stage 2 problem. The ophthalmologist wants to look at Brandon's eyes again on Tuesday. It is not bad enough yet to need laser eye surgery but is almost to that point. He wants to see on Tuesday if it has started to correct itself which in some cases it does or if it has stayed the same or gotten worse. If it has stayed the same or gotten worse he will do the surgery. It will be either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning if he does it. We will be here for 2-3 weeks. Monmouth had told us 1-2 weeks. If he gets the surgery he will need to stay here a little while after for the doctor to look at again. We had been told prior to coming here that the doctor likes to keep him an extra week but the doctor yesterday told us he likes to keep the babies an extra two weeks unless the eye doctor at home is comfortable following through. Then maybe we can come home one week after the surgery.

I really hate it out here. It is very inpersonal. They do things here completely different than they were at Monmouth (the way they feed him, suction his nose, etc.) and when I ask about doing it the way we were before I get told that is not how we do it here. If you want to talk to the nurse when you are not here you call and they page the nurse and then you wait for the nurse to pick up. They also page the nurse when you get to the NICU and you need to wait for the nurse to come get you. You can't just walk in.