Several months ago when Lincoln was just learning to sit up he fell over and bumped his head on the wall. He hit it hard enough for me to hear the "thump" and he cried, though now having quite a bit of experience with a little boy who topples and bumps his head, it wasn't anything I should have been concerned about. Still...you know me, I ran through the concussion checklist to make sure he was okay and that was when I noticed that one of his pupils was slightly bigger than the other...though only in the right light and when he looked just a certain way.
This was something I continued to watch. At first I thought it was a lighting issue...our house has a ton of windows and it seemed to only present itself when he was facing the windows in a certain direction. I mentioned it to the nurse in our pediatricians office not long after this occurred and she thought it was fairly normal and wasn't concerned.
The second time I asked the nurse about it (several months later), she suggested we see a pediatric opthamologist to have it checked out.
We saw the eye doctor last Wednesday. He was concerned that Lincoln had Horner's Syndrome, which presents itself with different size pupils, a droopy eyelid and perhaps a lack of tears and/or sweating on the effected side of the face. The syndrome in itself isn't a big deal, but it can be caused by an injury to the nerves that control the pupil and eyelid. The biggest concern was not that these nerves were injured but that he had a tumor pressing against them and/or on the nerve that was causing the symptoms. Our eye doctor recommended we see a pediatric neurologist to have this further evaluated.
You may recall from a much previous post that we took Lincoln to a pediatric neurologist not long after he was born because he was "jumping/twitching" in his sleep. It turned out to be nothing, but as a result, we were an established patient with a pediatric neuro and were able to get him in the next day, Thursday.
The neurologist really didn't see any of the other symptoms of Horner's Syndrome and thought it was possible that Lincoln has Anisocoria...essentially, he was just born with pupils of two different sizes. Apparently, this effects 20% of the population, and upon sharing this news with our family, we found out that my Grandmother also has pupils that are slightly different sizes. Anisocoria, like Horner's, is essentially no big deal in itself, but can be caused by a tumor in the brain or central nervous system and our neuro suggested Lincoln have and MRI and some labwork to rule out anything serious as the cause.
A fabulous friend made what I'm sure was a million different phone calls and was able to get Lincoln scheduled for an MRI on Saturday morning. Because Lincoln is so little and wouldn't have laid still for and MRI they had to sedate him during the procedure. The anesthesiologist who was with him for the MRI provided us with some relief and told us that he didn't see anything obvious on the MRI, so we were able to relax just a bit and enjoy our weekend with our family in town from Iowa (and the distraction of company was probably just what we needed!).
We received the official MRI results on Monday and everything was completely normal. The labwork the neuro ran was testing for neuroblastoma (a term which I'm only familiar with from seeing children's hospital commercials and refused to google for the sake of my sanity), it came in yesterday and was completely normal as well. We have said and are continuing to say our prayers of thanks!
Not only are we beyond thankful for these good results, but we are thankful for all of the prayers and good thoughts from our friends. We are truly blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful people in our daily lives.
