Doctor, My Eyes Have Seen ...

Sept. 17, 2014

* Note: I wrote this entry and forgot to post it the same day, so it's out of sequence, but that's how Freddie works a lot of the time!

Trials can serve to show us what we really have, which came home to me with a rather spectacular light show in my left eye in January. I woke up the morning of Husby's surprise 60th birthday party ready to hit the road running. As soon as I got out of bed, I noticed dark spots in the line of vision in my left eye. I've had floaters before and they go away after about a day, so I thought I'd lie back down for a few minutes and see if they dissipated. They didn't, and I had a party to put together, so I went to the closet to get dressed. That's when I saw a display that looked like a confetti spray of silver glitter inside my eye. As pretty as it was, I knew it couldn't be good. I called my optometrist's office and they could get me in within the hour. Driving was a little scary. 

My optometrist did the requisite tests, then she wanted to dilate my eyes for a good look inside. I asked her if we could wait until Monday to do that because I couldn't spare the downtime today. With genuine compassion, she said, "I'm sorry - this trumps a birthday party, as important as that is." She said a display of bright lights can indicate a detached retina, and if the retina was involved, it needed to be addressed immediately. Her exam indicated the retina was not detached, but she saw blood pooled at the back of the eye and scheduled an appointment with a retina specialist in the afternoon. I was so put out.

The retina doc dilated my eyes again, took probably 100 pictures of the inside of both eyes, and infused dye in my arm to see where in the eye the blockage was. That one appointment pretty much covered all the things I hate: needles, having my eyes dilated, and seemingly endless bright flashes directly into my eyes. The verdict, after all of this, was that a small piece of cholesterol blocked blood flow in the main vein off the optic nerve, causing an aneurysm. In the films, I could clearly see the blockage and an area surrounding it that was light yellow. The doctor said the light area was where the pooled blood destroyed nerves in the retina, and the dark spots I was seeing in my line of vision were the areas of the retina where no information was being transmitted to the brain. He said I essentially had a stroke in my eye, that nothing could be done but to wait and watch for symptoms to improve or worsen. His only recommendation was to get in to my primary-care doc ASAP for tests to determine if there were any more blockages floating around in my neck or heart. Oh great! He told me all this as nonchalantly as if I should go home and take some aspirin for a headache. I spent the whole weekend terrified that I would have a stroke before Monday and wake up to live my mother's nightmare of incapacitation.

Well, here's the point of this story and why it's my object of Gratitude for today. The last month or so I've had to work harder to see, so I visited the optometrist today for a prescription adjustment. How amazing is it that eight months after I sat in her office facing possible vision loss, today my eye is healthy, save some small blind spots on the retina?!? I saw a lot of the retina doc in the months following my "cardiovascular event," but by the third visit, the eyesight in my left eye had improved to almost 20/20. It took a few months, but the swelling went completely down, the pooled blood was absorbed, and the area turned pink and healthy again. The affected nerves are dead and don't regenerate, but instead of seeing dark opaque spots, now it's like looking through water spots on a lens. 

BUT - I can see! I haven't taken that for granted for one moment since the incident. I didn't lose my precious sight and I didn't have a stroke or heart attack - in fact, my echocardiogram and doppler neck scan were completely clear. My farsightedness means my perfect vision has deteriorated more over the last few years than that of nearsighted people, so it takes more and more effort to see anything anymore. Now with the blind spots, I have to work even harder, but my brother-in-law, who did have a detached retina several years ago and lost the sight in that eye, is now going blind from glaucoma in the other eye. I feel so much more empathy for him now, and I appreciate how difficult and dark life would be without sight. Despite this little trial, I'm so very grateful that I can still see my grandbabies and how they grow and change, the hummingbirds in my back yard, the beautiful world, and that I can drive. And I know that if I were blind I would somehow have to find blessings in my life, because finding things to be grateful for is what keeps faith and hope alive.

Another blessing in all of this: I first started seeing Fibro Doc #3 two weeks before the eye stroke. I checked with both him and my PCP about what tests they thought we should run. Fibro Doc requested a Homocysteine test, in addition to the cholesterol test, echocardiogram and doppler neck scan my PCP wanted. Fibro Doc knew what "mainstream" docs don't know or won't acknowledge: that elevated homocysteine levels are highly associated with stroke (a flaw in the methylation cycle, which also correlates with autism, ADHD, and ding-ding-ding - fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. See my post, "I Can Do Hard Things" for more info.) My Homocysteine was high, but after taking B-12 injections, SAMe and 5-MTHF for a few months, it dropped to well within normal range. My family doc wanted me to start a statin drug even though my cholesterol numbers were within normal range because "once you've had a cardiovascular event, you need to be on them, period." But removing cholesterol from the blood doesn't address why extra cholesterol is there anyway, which is because it's trying to protect the lining of the veins from inflammation. And statins have known side effects, including a link to Alzheimer's. When I asked the family doc about antioxidants and anti-inflammatory diet, he said there's no evidence that they have any real benefit. Well why would you make dietary changes when you can take a pill every day to make the numbers look good? 

I feel like the eye stroke was God's finger giving me a firm tap on the shoulder - too serious to ignore, serious enough to alert me and my new doctor to something that could be addressed before it became deadly, but not so serious that it sidelined me. Spending the morning at the optometrist and the whole afternoon at the retina specialist nearly derailed Husby's surprise birthday party, but God even took care of that. With a few adjustments, it happened as planned and we got to celebrate Husby's milestone along the timeline of his great life with family and dear friends after all. It's all good!