Nothing Lasts Forever...

Ed is on vacation for the next two weeks and spent his first day off going to the hospital with Gavin and me! It's been three weeks since Gavin's eye was checked. We've come a long way since January. For a while we were at the hospital nearly every day....and each visit was traumatic as we pinned Gavin down while he screamed in pain and fear. I don't like to replay those memories very often.

Now it's a different scene. We stroll into the hospital smiling...waving to friends at the reception desk, in the surgery department...in Ophthalmology.

Gavin giggles when he sees Dr. Lehman.

There's no need to pin him down anymore - she lets him stay in his stroller and gives him the chance to cooperate. She knows the toys he likes to focus on so she can examine him. It's almost, dare I say, a pleasant visit.

Gavin is now down to only two ointment applications a day in his left eye. Once in the morning and once at bedtime! And our next appointment is not until the end of July!

Yes, we have come a long way alright. It just goes to show you -nothing lasts forever. In those days that we feared he would lose his eye...when I was doing ointment every two hours around the clock...when we faced surgery after surgery to have his eye sewn shut...it all seemed overwhelming. It felt like it would never end - or it would end badly. I kept reminding myself that we'd actually been through worse as a family...and got through it. We would get through this...and we did. Next time you're faced with something that seems insurmountable - remember Gavin and know...nothing lasts forever. There's an end point to everything. Gavin's was a happy ending, thank God. One where he could keep both of his eyes.

Just look at these gorgeous blue eyes...

It's a good lesson for me during this infertility struggle. I have been battling the blues lately wondering why it has been so difficult for me to conceive this third child. It's hard for me to believe that we've been trying since Brian was six months old. Each night I have been injecting myself with a drug called Folllistim.

The needle goes into the top of my thigh - rotating legs each night. I'm okay with the injection - but the side effects are a bummer. It makes me feel pretty nauseous and tired. The hope is that this medicine helps to produce egg follicles...essentially giving us more "targets to shoot at" if you know what I mean! My eggs are 41, after all. They need all the help they can get! I continue with the injections until I go back to the office on Wednesday to check my progress. Hopefully my "end point" to this long struggle will be a little baby sister or brother for the boys.

Now THAT would be a happy ending...