Family outing, an eye appointment, and one last week

Yesterday marked one week until G's operation date. My husband has taken parental leave from work, and we took advantage of our time together with an impromptu trip to Ladysmith.

I have heard many times that the Ladysmith bakery has the best cinnamon buns around, so we decided to find out if the rumors were true. We were not disappointed. My husband ranks them second only to the ones we had in Maui, so we will call them the best on this side of the Pacific.

Afterward, we stumbled upon Transfer Beach. Neither of us had been there before, but we will certainly be back. It's like a smaller, quieter version of Parksville beach (for the local readers), complete with a beach volleyball court, kayak rental, playground, and ice cream shop /chip stand. My husband and I prefer peace and quiet to bells and whistles, and we prefer cinnamon buns to no cinnamon buns, so we might have to use Transfer Beach as a destination instead of Parksville.

Today, G had an appointment with the ophthalmologist to check out a tiny fleck in his right pupil. Our little man was very well behaved, charming the other patients in the waiting room, and being still and calm during the exam. He was given drops to dilate his pupils. It made him look so cute! After some searching  (the fleck is the size of a grain of sand) the doctor diagnosed G with an itsy bitsy congenital cataract. The good news is that it is not affecting the baby's vision or development. The doctor asked if we would like to be seen by a pediatric ophthalmologist in Victoria, since he would be more familiar with congenital eye defects. Since we travel down island to see the cardiologist anyway, we decided that it would be worth while. If he seconds the diagnosis, then we will be seeing the ophthalmologist once or twice a year to make sure that the cataract isn't getting larger.

This opens up a can of worms. Congenital  cataracts are relatively rare, and having both a cataract and tetralogy of fallot is a little bit like being struck by lightning twice. We wonder if G could have some sort of syndrome, and potentially more defects. On one hand, unilateral cataracts  (occurring in only one eye) are not typically syndromic. On the other hand, the chances of G being struck by both by chance is not more than 1 in 4 000 000, likely even more remote. We will be in touch with the pediatrician to discuss this, but probably not until after G recovers from his operation.