This was originally posted to my blog site, Diabetes Odyssey.
I had an eye appointment today. It’s been six weeks since my last visit, which was a laser treatment in my left eye. Today was supposed to just be a regular checkup to make sure the laser helped and that my eyes were not having any troubles. Well, things didn’t go as hoped. Why am I not surprised.
First I had a regular vision exam, then eye pressure ( 8 in my right, 11 in my left), and finally some dilation drops. Not long later I was taken into another room to have the same old scan done of my eyes so the doctor could get a good look at the inside. then I waited in the waiting room to be called in to see my retina specialist.
When she came in to talk to me, after pleasant greetings, she jumped right into the bad news. Both my eyes are having swelling problems. This has a bad result on my vision. My right eye has almost completely been written off as far as aggressive care goes. There’s really nothing much more that can be done since my vision is so poor and there is no hope of it ever getting better. My left eye has very good vision and we want to keep it that way, but the retinopathy is trying really hard to ruin that. So, she suggested doing Avastin injections in both my eyes to lower the swelling. I’ve had these done before, so I knew what she was talking about.
“You’re probably going to need the injections every couple of months indefinitely. We’ll do them today, if you’re OK with that.”
I was fine with it although I was not looking forward to it. These injections don’t hurt going in, but they always leave my eyes dry and irritated for the rest of the day.
While we waited for my insurance to OK the injections, my doctor asked me about the blind spot I said I had in the center of my left eye vision. I pointed to a vision chart to show her exactly where it was. She matched it up with the scan of my left eye and confirmed that I have swelling in that exact spot. She then examined both my eyes while the nurse made lots of notes for her.
By this time the insurance still had not replied with the injection go ahead, so we talked some more. She just went over the fact that she didn’t want to do surgery or too many more laser treatments unless it became more urgent.
“The injections should keep things under control for now, and we may need to do more laser treatments down the road if you continue to have micro-hemorrhages. But we’ll wait as long as we can.”
I am glad she doesn’t want to be too aggressive since this is my only good eye and there is risk with the aggressive treatments. I just hope she doesn’t wait too long to decide when an aggressive treatment is needed.
Finally my insurance gave the go ahead and she did the injections in fast and virtually painless fashion.
“OK, I’ll see you in eight weeks and we’ll see how things are going.” She said with a smile.
I thanked her and walked out to make my next appointment and go home.
Now I sit here at home typing this up even though my vision is super blurry and my eyes are dry and burning with scratchiness. At least I still have my vision in one eye. Here’s to working hard to keep it!