The lid

I am pretty sure that years from now, the fact that I posted this photo may anger both of my children.  I hope they don't take revenge by posting a photo of me in my pajamas taken in the morning.  It is sure to be far inferior in the cuteness factor.

I am not sharing it to embarrass them, but instead to show Anya's eyelid.  It is now seven months post eyelid lift surgery.  You can see that her eye is more open than prior to the surgery, but it does not match her other eye.  This photo shows exactly how it looks in what I would call a resting state: her face is relaxed, as is the muscle in her eyebrow.  You may remember, that it is her eyebrow muscle that now controls the movement of her eyelid.  When she is very animated, her eyebrows raise, and her eye opens completely.  When she is tired, her eyebrow hardly raises and her lid is at half mast.

When Anya saw her retina specialist back in December, he thought the results of the surgery were just right.  He agreed that her lid does not open much of the time, but it does when her eyebrows raise like it is supposed to.  He claimed that as she gets older, she will have an increased self-awareness of her eyelid.  She will likely spend some time in front of a mirror trying different things out until she masters how to open her eye in the manner she likes.

Just last week she told me, "When kids ask me about my eye, I just tell them that it gets tired sometimes."  It was the first I had heard of anyone asking about her eye since healing from her surgery.  I explained to Anya just what I explained above and asked if she would like to look in the mirror.  She said, "it is too much work to raise my eyebrow all the time.  I'm fine."  She is fine.  She is better than fine, and she has the poise and self-confidence to realize it.  May it always be so.