What PRP taught me

The flashers started after the third PRP session. I told Dr Michael O’Brien about them and got no response, no reassurance, and he went ahead and did three more sessions. By the end of the sixth session, I suspected that my periphery was closing in. Both these symptoms indicate retinapathy that the PRP treatment was supposed to prevent. Both are also well documented side effects of PRP treatment.
So what is the point of calling the doctor right away, as instructed? It had always been my intent to do PRP when I perceived retinapathy problems, not when some doctor told me I had problems. The hemorrhage changed that and I let myself get scared into it on the chance that I was wrong about the hemorrhage being caused by the Cialis. I’d been warned and threatened and scared about retinapathy so many times that filtering the legitimacy from the profiteering scare tactics could not be done.
I was pretty sure I was right about the hemorrhage, but I am not arrogant enough to refuse to entertain the possibility that I was wrong.
While O’Brien showed no God Complex–probably because Dr. Michel Negrey’s God Complex left no room in the Koch offices for anyone else to compete–I do, however, think O’Brien and other doctors need to think more about performing PRP procedures before doing them. Doctors need a little less confidence in their own certainty. They need to listen to their patients more and listen to the drug reps and medical equipment salesmen less.
I had been told three times over fifteen years that I would be blind in six months without PRP surgery. Not one of those three different doctors mentioned the risk of causing the precise thing that their profitable procedure should prevent.
None
All three
Doctor Michael O’Brien, who finally did the procedure, had not needed scare tactics. The blood from the Cialis-induced hemorrhage had me scared enough. O’Brien only needed to exploit minor reasonable doubt about the cause of the blood.
O’Brien and the others are still making money shooting lasers into other people’s eyes while I descend ever more rapidly into darkness that leaves me without means to earn funding for the next medical bill.
This is America. Medical treatment is a for-profit business.
Buyer beware.
I do not mean to discourage anyone who needs the treatment.
I do mean to have the information out there for the people who don’t need it, for people who might be easily scared by the threat of blindness in six months.
The patient should be the primary decider, and he needs to be honest with himself. If he is not seeing the signs himself, he should have his eyes checked no less than every six. The first time he notices wavy lines or loss at the peripheral or dancing lights in his eyes, he has nothing to lose from the procedure that could possibly salvage his vision before further loss. were far more concerned in scaring me into a procedure for a hefty fee.educated me on warning signs to watch out for.