Congenital Cataract

Those first four months she seemed so normal. She cooed; she smiled. Her big blue eyes made my heart swim.

Then the tear ducts were blocked for weeks until one September day they spontaneously burst and unplugged. A swamp of goo the color of sprouted wheat disappeared from all around Lucy's eyes. I wanted to sing and kiss the morning air. I jogged instead for miles crisp and fresh as an apple. Each wrangled tree branch tightened into focus as I ran and sucked in smoky tangles of fall air.

October, I almost didn't go. The appointment was to examine her plugged ducts. No slime or swampy fluids pooled up around her lakes of eyes any more. Cured I thought.

Somehow though, I went to the appointment anyway. No reason, I just went. And then there it was: the cataract. A smudge the shape of a sail warbled over the tiny lens of her eye. Congenital, there from birth.

We patched it, the good eye that is. They call it ocular seclusion. It forces the brain to strengthen neurons associated with the bad eye.

















So, there we are last October waiting to see if our baby will need eye surgery. It's not the sort of thing you plan for really. You know, wondering if they will give her a plastic implant or just go with contacts on a five month old, well, after ultrasonically shattering her original lens and sucking it out through an itty bitty straw. Eye surgery?!