Dodging a Bullet

So the little one has been plagued with a blocked tear duct since he was knee high to a grasshopper.  Apparently it is very common in babies, but in 80 percent of cases it goes away by the time the kid is 12 months old.  Our opthamologist said that if it didn't, we'd need to schedule a minor surgery to have it opened up.  So, the blocked duct stayed on like a lingering houseguest (geez my figures of speech are lame today!) and caused a lot of hassle, namely just making his left eye all goopy and gross-looking when his allergies acted up, causing me to apologize to everyone we encountered, saying "No, he's not contagious, that's just a blocked tear duct."  Well, we finally scheduled the surgery for May 5th and had to postpone because that's when he had that nasty viral infection.  The resked surgery was supposed to be today - May 19th.  However, on Friday afternoon I got a call from the anesthesiologist herself.  She had been reviewing our little patient's history and told me, "I don't think this is a good time to do this surgery because your son has a lot of problems."  That declaration certainly snapped me to attention and I asked her what she was talking about.  Basically she was really concerned about the incidences of unexplained allergies that I wrote about in his patient history form.  He's had so many problems with mucus and phlegmy coughs and itchy eyes lately and our pedi has had him on Claritin and some nose spray for the past several weeks.  I'll admit I was starting to wonder if we were better off trying to determine exactly WHAT he is allergic to so we can narrow down our scope of treatment.  Well, that's exactly what the anesthesiologist recommended we do.  She said that putting a 12-month-old under when he has been battling heavy mucus and congested breathing would be "a big problem".  Talk about not mincing words.  Good lord, what if she wouldn't have called me to postpone?  I'm certainly no doctor and I never would've given it a thought.  These are the types of things that can really drive a control freak like myself nuts... anyway, we've put off the surgery indefinitely and I've got us an appointment with a pediatric allergist at the end of the month.  Now we can look forward to getting a handle on these allergies after all!