Me and my eyes
Late in 2016 I suddenly lost a good portion of the vision in my left eye.
I went to my regular eye doctor I’d been going to for decades who saw that my optic nerve was swollen. He thought that could be causing it.
"The number one cause for that is smoking," he told me.
"I don’t smoke and never have."
"I know."
"What’s the second most common cause?"
"….tumors."
He sent me to an expert across town.
As I sat in that second chair that doctor’s assistant asked me:
"Do you have your MRI scans and chemo schedule?"
"No… I woke up today with a lot of my left eye blank…"
"It’s early days for him," the doctor said. "Go easy on him."
The second specialist the day after did assure me that it wasn’t tumors, but he had no idea what it was.
And, he was clear with me that I should expect it to get better.
"Some of it now is due to the swelling and will come back as that goes down. But, nerves have been cut. I won’t say they never heal. I used to say that and have been proven wrong. But, I will say that if they heal they heal very, very slowly.
And, every year I went back for the measurement of how much was lost. There was no improvement between 2018 and 2019, but it didn’t get any worse.
"That’s about the best you can expect," the doctor told me. "But, 88% is a lot. And, your actual vision where the nerves work is excellent, well above average."
I missed last year’s visit due to Covid, but was expecting to see that it had maintained that 88% when I went in the week before last.
"The machine’s not working," the doctor told me. "Your nerve looks much better. If I didn’t know what you had gone through, I might not notice any damage."
"But, without that test, you don’t know if I’m actually seeing more."
"No. We should do that test."
So, this morning at 7:30 I was back there as the machine was running and the person who operates it was going to be in first thing.
Just in case you don’t notice it there, it’s 95%
Just after I got home, the doctor called me.
"It’s 95%," he told me. "That’s better than I thought you would heal."
"I know," I said. "I made your tech print me a copy and I’m looking at it now."
"I only just finished my report now…"
"I got a printout of the machine results directly."
"Oh. Well, I just wanted you to know it’s good news."
"Thank you. I agree."
It’s been a long 4 1/2 years. I still take those eye drops.
I still hope it doesn’t happen again, or hit the other eye.
But, I’m pretty happy about 95%.
It’s been a lot of change…
I’m glad it was in the direction it went…
Just for reference, here are the links to when it started off:
https://fbhjr.dreamwidth.org/1120717.html / https://fbhjr.livejournal.com/1123419.html