My sister and I were chatting last week about her participation on the BPES Facebook group. She brought up how a dominant topic in the conversation is around surgery.  We are so grateful that it was not medically necessary to have surgery as children. I mentioned on the pages of our site my entire surgery journey as an adult. One of my largest fears going into surgery was that I wouldn’t look the same and I would lose my identity as me. I was worried something would go wrong and my eyes would be permanently damaged. Thankfully everything went very well. I do look slightly different and I miss my smaller eyes (can you believe that?). I remember soon after my surgery a very dear friend of mine comment that they preferred how I looked before the surgery. That stung a bit.

Overall, I don’t regret my surgery because my eyes were slowly closing. Having surgery significantly improved my quality of life. Of course I would do it all over again. I am a bit jealous of my siblings though as none of them have needed surgery. I can live with having gone through one surgery even though I really really would have preferred to have never gone under the knife. I only hope that the surgery holds for the rest of my life and I don’t have to do it again. There are cases were as you age, the muscle gets weaker and needs to be lifted again.

Even though I feel hypocritical saying it, my sister and I are happy to advocate that there are situations where you don’t have to have surgery with BPES. We’re so grateful it (mostly) wasn’t medically necessary in our family.