But I wasn’t fighting the duct anymore. I was fighting the silence of her first cry. The helplessness of watching a nurse wipe away a crust that should have been a tear. I was fighting the idea that my body had built her wrong, had handed her a flaw in her very first plumbing.
A doctor may perform a procedure where they insert a thin wire (probe) into the puncta (the small holes in the corners of your eyelids) to physically clear the obstruction. They then flush the duct with a saline solution to ensure it is clear. Intubation (Stenting) how do you unblock a tear duct
A balloon. In my one-year-old’s tear duct. Inflated to stretch the scar tissue. Because I had massaged and probed and compressed my way into making everything worse. But I wasn’t fighting the duct anymore
We were in the garden. A freak warm spell in late September. Liora was toddling between the lavender bushes, drunk on freedom, when she stumbled. Her palms hit the gravel. She didn’t cry. She never cried, not really. But she turned to look at me, and her face—that crumpled, petal-crush face from the NICU—was wet. I was fighting the idea that my body
