On Friday, March 4, we travelled with Georgia to Vancouver Children’s Hospital for her second surgery. The aims for this surgery were threefold: to extract her broken lens and cataract; to insert an artificial lens; and, to repair or remove several sutures that had come loose along the vertical laceration caused by her injury.

Kandy and I were both grateful and hopeful as we ventured in the direction of Vancouver. For several days we had been awaiting a call from the kind receptionist for Georgia’s surgeon, who was to inform us of when her next operation would occur. We had been told to anticipate a call one or two days before Georgia’s scheduled surgery, so we had been trying to keep as loose a schedule as life would allow until then. Time is allotted across the full range of specializations at the BC Children’s Hospital O.R. Accordingly, our surgeon and all of the other specialists work under the constraint of these necessary limitations on time and space. If Georgia was to ever have the hope of seeing again, this surgery would be the one to provide the most promise. Given the damage that had occurred within, it was not possible for Georgia’s eye to transmit sensory input back to her optic nerve–too many obstructions in the way and too many corners to bend. Once her damaged lens was extracted and an unblemished, clear lens, inserted, an open pathway could, in part, be restored in her eye.

For the weeks since Georgia’s surgery, she has had to endure a rigorous regimen of painful medication administrations directly to her damaged eye. During each administration she requires intense physical restraint; we must hold her prone, facing upward, while I attempt to release drops into Georgia’s right eye, which she clenches tightly like a vise each time. As she writhes and screams, the trauma that she is experiencing sounds out to us, pounding and reverberating against our bodies and our every parental instinct. Many of you who are parents–and many of you, besides, who have held complete love in your heart for another–have had to endure similar trials. Our hearts are broken for you. On each of these occasions, astonished and gasping, Georgia exclaims how badly it burns while we persist with what are bewildering inflictions of power to her. While we have to engage her in this process every two of her waking hours, we are fortified in the moment by the hope of her seeing once again.

When we arrived in the pre-op area on Friday, we were greeted by the kind smiles and competent compassion of the intake nurses. Moments later, we were approached by the lovely nurse who would guide us through the day’s events. Shortly after we were situated in the staging area, our nurse sadly informed us that we would have to administer two drops to Georgia’s eye every 10 minutes so that the necessary degree of pupil dilation could occur prior to surgery. This came as a surprise to us; we had hoped to be able to simply distract and divert attention away from Georgia’s focus on the intimidating environs that encompassed her there. As Georgia received the announcement that we would have to give her more drops, her body stilled and a focused burden appeared in place of the familiar smile that had, moments before, so fittingly adorned her face. Her eyes darted back and forth in a fleeting quest to capture an idea to outwit the big people in the room. Her hurry for an alternative was crushing to witness. She feigned composure, nodding hopefully, as her broken toddler-ese poured out: “We do them to-later, Mommy? We do them in ten more minutes? We not do them now? We do them later, Daddy. We do them later? We do the drops at home?…” Our nurse was notably shaken by Georgia’s fear and resistance as we three bound her body to administer the medications. With much prying, as the fourth drop found its way into the tiny slit between Georgia’s clamped eyelids, her nurse hardened, stating, “This is too much–she’s being traumatized. I’m not doing this anymore. No more drops–they can give them to her when she’s sedated if they wish.” And with that, the poor woman left our presence to gather herself and attend to the rest of her duties. She was wonderful.

It pained us that Georgia’s serenity and her enjoyment of simply being with Momma and Daddy had to be interrupted in those moments. This was not the way that we had hoped to guide her into the process of her second surgery. To follow the drops, the surgical staff brought in a warming mat to help increase Georgia’s core body temperature for her procedure. Kandy sat with her on the bed as the device hummed and puffed warm air all around Georgia’s little frame. Following a quick debriefing with the anesthesiologist and a signing of the parental release forms, it was time for me to put on my gown and carry Georgia, once again, into the O.R.

Having been in that same environment a mere three and a half weeks prior, Georgia was savvy to the trade tactics of all of the surgical staff. They invited her to blow bubbles while I held her toward me to block her view of the i.v. syringe that an anesthesiologist resident attempted to insert into a tiny vein on her hand behind us. The chief anesthesiologist–the kind, jocular man who had, just moments before, come to prepare us in the pre-op area–stood behind my left shoulder while holding Georgia’s arm to steady it for his resident. Feeling his grasp tighten, Georgia was alerted to the clandestine operation occurring behind us. She bent and jerked in an attempt at catching a glimpse of the men as their efforts became more labored and explicit. The bubbles that the female O.R. nurse had been blowing on Georgia’s other side as a diversion had quickly lost their appeal. I raised my hand in a direct attempt at blocking Georgia’s sight of the insertion, which irritated her further: “No Daddy! What they doin’?” My efforts eventually failed and Georgia caught fleeting sight of the syringe. With that, she proceeded to give the chief anesthesiologist two determined kicks right in the plums. Suffice it to say that his own pain increased his sense of urgency about the moment. Wincing, wide-eyed and hunched forward, through clenched teeth he suggested to his resident that greater haste might be a good thing for everyone involved. Despite the man’s evident good will toward my daughter, I have noted in hindsight, the complete absence of remorse that I felt for him at the time. Georgia had begun to escalate into a full panic as she called for Kandy. As the pasty white anesthetic crept up the line into her system, Georgia slurred and struggled against the drug’s incapacitating effects. It is a horrible experience to see the spirit of your child so forcefully subdued; despite one’s awareness of the plain necessity of the procedure, it strikes you as a violent contradiction to life and to every parental sensibility within you. I laid Georgia on the table as the last vestiges of access to her faculties dwindled. She finally dropped into unconsciousness and laid there motionless. As I had two times previously in Georgia’s life, I kissed her on the forehead, told her I loved her, and left her in the capable hands of so many strangers.

I found Kandy sitting expectantly in the parent’s waiting area. The air in that room is perpetually dense; the gravity of concern and the degree of anguish there are palpable. Passing by the churning guts and furrowed brows of our peers, we wrote our names and numbers on the access board and left the room in search of lighter environs. We were advised by Georgia’s surgeon to anticipate at least two and a half hours before the procedures would be completed. We grabbed two coffees and each passed the time in our customary manner of self-assurance: I wrote and worked, periodically exchanging nervous smiles with passers-by. I glimpsed them across a momentary existential chasm: the seeming blitheness of their far-off banter–complaints about the lunch menu and where to travel during spring break–so distant from the harrowing draw that I felt, calling all of my interest back in the direction of the room in which our daughter lay. Kandy, ever-vulnerable, set her sights on any willing conversational target; her most engaging participant, the ear/nose/throat surgeon whom she had just witnessed admonish the glaring entitlement of the mother who complained to him in the pre-op area that the surgery he was about to perform on her son–the implantation of drainage tubes–would interrupt their travel plans to Whistler. “I thought you did a wonderful job of encouraging her to think about what was truly important,” she kindly opined.

“Oh, thank you.” He replied, so clearly charmed by Kandy’s friendliness and southern warmth, “I thought maybe I was a little too direct–Now, that’s not a Vancouver accent–you’re not from around here…”

Off they continued, into the welcome distraction that Kandy so fervently sought.

At the two hour mark, Kandy and I shared a conciliatory gaze, gathered our belongings in silence, and, reaching for the other’s hand, walked quietly back toward the O.R. There we remained–there in that weight-ing room. After forty five minutes, Kandy got up to inquire with the nurse’s desk regarding whether there had been any word on Georgia from the recovery room. Twenty minutes later, Georgia’s surgeon–a gentle giant from South Africa, miraculously equipped to accomplish the impossible with the budding soul-windows of the little creatures that he is charged with caring for and curing–appeared in the corridor. With a few lumbering steps toward us he peeled off his surgeons mask, breathing deeply the first unimpeded air that he had drawn in the last three hours. He was beleaguered, but resolute. “She did well.” he said, generously, “The new lens is in.” The good news successfully conveyed, he drew in another breath and sighed while averting his eyes, “We’re going to need to get her on the list for a corneal graft–at this point, I don’t believe we have another option. The surface of her cornea has become very irregular, given everything that’s happened” He continued, “We’ll let the eye settle down a bit before determining next steps, but I think we all need to prepare for that reality. I’ll need you to bring her back to Vancouver tomorrow for a post-op examination.” Kandy and I thanked him for his focused attention to Georgia. I placed my hand on his shoulder, praying to him that he now go home and get some rest. With a grateful smile, he assured me that that would be the case.

Another forty minutes passed before we were summoned by a hospital steward: “Mr. and Mrs. White for Georgia White?” Again, awash in an ocean of uncertainty, we swam down that hallway toward the recovery room, feeling helpless amid all of the imagined versions of our reunion with our daughter.

She was asleep.

She lay there on her stomach, the left side of her face implanted deeply into her pillow. She looked broken. Her upper torso was exposed in an effort at helping her awaken from the subconscious realm she presently inhabited. The right side of her face was heavily bandaged, the gauze and the shield that covered her right eye hinting at the three hour invasion she had just endured. There was blood around the whole perimeter of her eye patch. Above her, like a guardian angel, stood Georgia’s recovery nurse–compassionate; vigilant. She shared her name with us and immediately attuned to the concerns my face evinced as I listened to the irregular ping emanating from Georgia’s heart monitor. “We expect to see those numbers after a longer surgery, Mr. White–this is the range we’re hoping for; she’s well within it–I have a popsicle for her when she wakes up.” I reminded Kandy, who stroked Georgia’s hair and back, that she would likely be incoherent and inconsolable when she came-to. We had been here before: once for her hernia operation at the age of two; the second time, just three and a half weeks ago following the initial emergency procedure performed on her eye. We wheeled her bed back to the secondary recovery area where we were reunited with our pre-op nurse–the one who had so mercifully refused to give any more drops to Georgia before surgery. It wasn’t long after our arrival there that Georgia was ripped out of her slumber by the throbbing of her new incisions–there were a total of five in addition to the sutured laceration ensuing from her initial trauma. Her globe was now more vulnerable than ever. “My eye, my eye, my eye…owe, owe, owe!” her cries grew into a crescendo of conscious clarity. She was awake. Any of you who have endured surgical procedures will be familiar with the startling suddenness that coming to your senses in such cases involves. For a three year old, there is simply no frame of reference for what one is experiencing. Total, absorbing, discomfort was all that she knew in those moments. Georgia and all of the other children lay there in those bays, paradoxically pained by the efforts just engaged in to help them.

Georgia cried for Kandy, who once again got into the bed with her. I encouraged Kandy not to try to reason with Georgia–she wanted so badly to help her out of her confusion. Eventually, Georgia was willing to take her popsicle. Her former refusal of the frozen tower of synthetic flavor now transmuted into a manic need to lick and taste and smell in a semi-conscious high. Lick she did. Desperately, eyes clenched closed…until she dozed back off to sleep, her arm slowly ratcheting the popsicle down onto her naked chest with each drifting breath. Then, startled awake by the freeze of the treat that she still gripped, she commenced licking, eyes still closed, but semi-conscious. This continued for nearly twenty minutes. I stood at Georgia and Kandy’s bedside, brimming with pride at the inner drive of the little creature I am still getting to know; her determination carrying joy and celebration into the room for her mother and I to relish.

Eventually, Georgia became more present. Still sobbing and stuttering, but now fully aware that Kandy and I were there with her and that we were about to go home to begin the next phase of her healing. She sipped more apple juice, still clenching her eyes tightly and wrapped determinedly around her Momma. As has become our custom, we stopped at the gift shop on the way out to reward her with a new stuffed animal. We spoke the range of options available to her as she still refused to open her exposed eye. She chose a pink and white cat with vibrant, caricatured eyes. We left the hospital just after 3pm. We had left home that morning just after 7am and were grateful to be headed back toward Abbotsford. Georgia drifted back into restful slumber shortly after we left the parking lot at Children’s and would remain asleep until we arrived at our friends’ home to retrieve her brother and sister nearly two hours later. Upon our arrival, she awakened and greeted her siblings with a smile and a half-opened eye: “This is my kitty, Sophia!–My got him at the hat hospital!”