macular degeneration, macular, diagnosis Shimmering – My Macular Degeneration Journey/Journal

Shimmering

Albert Einstein once said “the more I learn, the more I realize what I don’t know.” Apparently I am in good company, because I feel the same way.

With no immediate crises in my life and no immediate reason to freak out – and even with geographic atrophy and permanent retina damage, this state of affairs is possible! – I have been trying to get caught up with some research. I keep running into things I have no knowledge or understanding of.

Lin suggested that after over a year we should know SOMETHING about these things. We don’t. For example, I am still clueless about what I can expect concerning the progression of density of my ‘blind spots’.

And speaking of disease progression, (was that a smooth segue or was that a smooth segue??), I do have a couple of things to say about disease progression from that last article I read. Remember the one on GA?

The article opined all the new interest and hoopla about dry AMD came from the success with treating wet. However it wasn’t why I would think. You know, we have scaled that mountain and are looking for new summits sort of thing? Nope, the reason was they discovered that even after severely limiting the development of neovascularization in eyes, the eyes just kept right on progressing with dry AMD! Sorry, darlings.? It seems a former wet AMD eye becomes a dry AMD eye.

And dry AMD – to my great chagrin – progresses. How much? I assume it can take the entire macula but I have not seen that definitely stated anywhere. I have seen it stated that it generally stops with the macula. Maybe not such a ‘small’ favor. Could be a lot worse.

The last thing I learned from that article is how best to document disease progression. That is with something called cSLO FAF. Isn’t that informative? Exciting even!

OK, OK, just ‘funning’ with you. I looked it up. Fundus autofluorescence is diagnostic imagery. It detects fluorophores in the retina. Fluorophores being chemicals that re-emit lights shone at them. Research quoted by Wu in Use of Fundus Autofluorescence in AMD said risk of wet AMD can be predicted by a patchy reflection pattern and lots of ‘shimmer’ (my word) at the edge of a patch of geographic atrophy is predictive of cell death and growth of the GA. The more ‘shimmer’ the worse the trouble you are in. [Lin/Linda: We hadn’t had a music reference for some time.  When I hear the word ‘shimmer’, I think of John Lennon’s song “Julia” which uses the word ‘shimmering’, hence this page’s title. ::smile::]

So if anyone throws a bunch of letters ending with FAF at you and says you are going to have that, it may be they are checking for disease progression. I cannot remember ever having one, but it is noninvasive so no biggie. Should not hurt. Just more pretty pictures. Hopefully they will find something good.

Pretty much it for now. Will probably write some more nonsense between now and then, but Wednesday I am going to another support group meeting. They are demonstrating an electronic monocular called a Mojo and I want to see it. Will let you know!

Chat with you later!

 

written May 6th, 2o17

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