A Letter To My Son On Your Discharge Day!

You were just a few months old when we had a routine check-up with the health visitor that afternoon, you were born seven weeks premature at 33 weeks and had already seen the operating theatre and attended lots of hospital appointments. What I didn't know back then, when you were still a very tiny baby boy compared to other babies your age, you were referred to the eye department at our local hospital for a suspected squint.

We attended your first appointment and was told not to worry, these thing's are common and can disappear by themselves, but still the team wanted to check up on you every few months, and so we attended appointment after appointment.

So many people would ask about your squint, but I just couldn't see it, it's not that I refused to believe it, I just couldn't see it, until I looked back at photo's. I would take a photo of you on my phone or camera, and would view them and then I would notice it, but then I'd look straight at you, and I just couldn't see it.

In time you needed glasses, special eye exercises and even an eye patch a few times. We would play around and pretend we were pirates, never taking that smile off your face, even when a child at nursery pulled the patch off and ran off with it losing it!

You attended so many appointments and had so many tests, backwards and forwards between the specialist and the different eye-related clinics, but at each and everyone you'd amaze me with your extremely good behaviour! You never moaned, you never complained.

When you were five and the squint had still not disappeared but actually got worse, talk of an operation started. It was then also at the age of five we found out you had astigmatisms in both eyes, another unique factor about a very special boy.

At the age of seven, it was time for the team looking after you at the eye department to make their decision, and they made the decision to go ahead with an operation. Operation number four for you. You were eight when you had your operation and it all went successfully.

Today on the 14th of October 2014, I picked you up early from school to attend yet another appointment. I watched as you played with the wooden kitchen, and gracefully accepted your pretend cups of tea, sipping from the little blue cup that you ever so kindly gave to me.

I reminisced the times of you being a baby in a buggy in the very same waiting room, the times when you was a waddling toddler, holding your hand we went to every seat and touched it - just because we could. I reminisced the times my small child was finally tall enough to reach the wooden kitchen's oven, you ''cooked'' me and other patients so much food, making us all smile!

I watched today, just as I do every time we attend the department, and I wonder what they're going to say. You didn't have lunch at school as I had to collect you before lunchtime had started to make sure we get to your appointment on time, so I brought a packed lunch with me for you to enjoy.

You was eating your cucumber and tuna sandwiches when the nurse called us through, and we went through as usual doing all the usual test. I was putting on your coat, ready to brace for the cold and rain outside, I was expecting it to still be raining, I was expecting it to still be cold, but what I wasn't expecting was the words ''we're happy to discharge Spud''.

I think I said pardon twice in disbelief, did I really just hear that, or did I imagine it? Did another doctor say it to another patient next door, and I've overheard it.

BUT NO.

Today on the 14th of October, six months after your operation, and after numerous amounts of appointments and test, you was discharged from the eye department.

You make me smile beyond relief, the littlest things you do down to the biggest is utterly amazing. You weren't sure of the word discharged, you had not heard it before, so waited for the lady to leave the room to get the discharge documents from the printer before you asked me what it meant. When I told you, that we didn't have to keep coming to the eye department any more, your little eyes lit up and a smile spread across your face.

I know you're not a fan of the hospital, I've witnessed the many tears your little eyes have dropped as you've been scared to attend, I've experienced the tightness of your little hand's hold when we're on the bus on our way to the hospital, but you did it baby, for eight years, hundreds (not literally) of appointments and an operation later - you've finally been discharged.

One down baby, another one to go!

Love your number one fan,

Mummy xx