Sunday, November 15, 2009

Blocked eye duct

I've come in contact with a lot of babies or kids before becoming a mom myself. I have to say that I have not heard about blocked eye duct before until it happened to my little girl.

When she was younger, there were a couple of days where her eyes would produce some sticky discharge and it would be more teary than usual. Sometimes her eyes would be glued shut by those sticky substance when she woke up in the morning. The paed advised me to clean her eyes as frequently as possible with clean cotton soaked in warm boiled water. After a few days she was ok.

A couple of weeks ago she started having the same problem on her left eye. Sometimes mild, sometimes pretty bad. Her eye white looks normal and it doesn't seem to itch as I don't see her rubbing the eye often. I cleaned her eye and told the babysitter to do the same but the problem refused to go away. I finally took her to the paed today (just in case) to get it checked. The paed said it was a blocked duct and told me to massage the tip of her eye, in circular motion and then rub it down towards the nose. This was supposed to help unblock the duct and move whatever mucus that was blocking it down to the nose. I was also told to put a drop of normal saline into her eye every 4 hrs. If the problem persists after a few days, I was advised to use the antibiotic eye drop. I hope I dont have to use it. The consultation and med costs us RM75.

When we arrived at the clinic this afternoon Hayley refused to step into the clinic. She remembered the place. After some coaxing, she entered and started playing with the toys. When our turn came, we entered the paed's office and she cried like she was tortured. All the paed did was to look at her eye with a little torchlight and I had to hold her body and hands while the nurse held her head straight. She fought and struggled and continued to scream at the top of her lungs. Boy.. she was so uncooperative. I am not sure how it would be as she gets older. I was planning to give her Hep A jabs when she turn 2 in February and now I am really concerned.

As we've not been to the clinic for a while, we weighed and measured her height. She now weighs 10.27kg, she was 9.65kg at 18 months. Her height was slightly inaccurate as she wasn't co-operative. She was 82.5cm at 18 months but 82cm at 21 months.

2 comments:

Leona said...

My niece also had this same problem when she was around Hayley's age. After treatment with antibiotics... her problem went away.

Yah.. i know the feeling when a child doesn't want to co-operate when at the doctors. Very stressful and 'sam-thong'!

Kiasu Mom said...

Her eye is ok now after using the saline and with a little massage around the tip. Will monitor for another day. Hopefully wont need to use the antibiotic.

Hayley is so scared of the doctor cause this doctor no good la. She frightened her when she was younger. This doc got no patience and didn't know how to 'tam' kids before she treat them or touch them. But I still go to her cause its convenient and she's got our records.