macular degeneration, macular, diagnosis I Tried My Best – My Macular Degeneration Journey/Journal

I Tried My Best

I was raised to be responsible. I am responsible. I go to work and the job gets done. I have done the job between bouts of vomiting, with fevers and with migraines.

I am responsible but I am not crazy.

OK. Maybe the word is not crazy. However, I am definitely not one for not using good judgment or not looking at the big picture. Now, this is especially true when it comes to my vision.

I was at a professional gathering on Friday. One person there asked me about the circumstances of my sight loss. This person had an eye bleed that had started on Tuesday! That is three, count them, three! days. I advised an immediate trip to an emergency room. I told this person his sight could be very much at risk but was told in turn he had other, important obligations to attend to and he would, essentially, get around to it later.

I tried one more time and was again rebuffed. Are we truly our brother’s keeper? I wanted to call 911 and get this person to the hospital. That would not have been appreciated, but would he have appreciated my efforts if I had saved his sight? If he gets to a doctor sometime next week and gets told he has done irreparable damage to his vision will he appreciate I tried? Will he wish he had listened?

I assume our readers have more common sense, but since assuming can make an ‘ass of u and me’, I am going to spell it out. Never, as in NEVER, ignore an eye bleed. Mary Lowth wrote about vitreous hemorrhages for Patient. She stated vitreous hemorrhages are one of the most common causes of sudden, painless vision loss. Vision can be totally obscured by blood in the vitreous. Even if nothing serious is wrong that caused the bleed to begin with, you can be left with floaters. Not to mention blood is cleared from the vitreous at the rate of only 1% a day. That is over three months of impaired vision!

There is a whole list of things that can be horribly wrong to cause bleeding in the eye. Because I have dry AMD and have been warned about the potential of developing wet AMD, a bleed due to neovascularization was the first thing I thought about. There is also diabetic retinopathy and posterior vitreous detachment. PVD can be associated with a tear in the retina. None of these are problems to take lightly. [Lin/Linda: if you ever see what looks like a curtain drawing over your visual field or part of your visual field is obstructed, that IS an emergency which requires IMMEDIATE attention because it can mean that you do have a retinal tear. Most PVDs are accompanied by lots of floaters & sometimes flashes of light that are more noticeable at night (that’s the vitreous tugging at the retina. If in doubt, call your doctor.]

Lowth stated “retinal detachment must be excluded urgently”. In other words, should you have a bleed, run, don’t walk to the doctor and make sure your retina is still where it is supposed to be. Waiting three days is not an option.

Some of you are also sadly aware that bleeding can cause scarring and even more significant vision loss. Bleeds should be diagnosed and controlled as quickly as possible.

So, there you have it, some people believe they have more important things to do. They believe satisfying responsibilities is more important than taking care of their eye health. These people are wrong. If you even think you have an eye bleed, get to your doctor.

As for this person yesterday, I tried my best. Matthew 10:14 [“And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.”]

written December 3rd, 2017

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