Essentially, I am blind because I am diabetic, going on 40 years now. It just catches up to you, I could say. I have not lived the life of a bad diabetic all these years, something guaranteed to hasten multiple problems and complications. For me, diabetes had been less of a direct cause and more of an opportunistic leech ever ready to suck away and complicate anything it could.
The right eye’s been blind since 2003. I coped and adjusted to that fairly well. I did not leave a minor cornea abrasion covered long enough. They eye began looking around the temporary obstruction. When that happened, my eye muscles pulled out of place, it permanently peeled the retina off the back of the eye, opportunistic of old damage. I retain a pinhole of vision in the right eye, but that is obscured by a dense cataract and that the muscle damage does not allow my brain to properly direct the eye.
The left eye is even more complicated. Like with the right eye, there was old but stable diabetic non-proliferative retinapathy.
The stable situation changed in 2009 when I took a dose of Cialis. The boner pull caused a massive blood hemorrhage in my good eye. Levitra or Viagra could have done the same thing.
In seeking treatment, cataract surgery would be necessary as the cataract was now filled with blood. Doctors scared into doing PRP laser treatment to "prevent advancement of retinapathy."
Cataract surgery can trigger proliferative retinapathy. I was not told that.
The PRP treatment can also increase risk of advanced retinapathy and is almost guaranteed to reduce peripheral vision. I wasn’t told that either. I had forestalled PRP treatment for two decades. The doctors told me that retinapathy, not boner pulls, caused the blood gushing hemorrhage. I knew it was Cialis, but I am not arrogant enough to not doubt that the doctors might be right.
Flashes of light, aptly called "flashers," started after the third PRP session. Flashers are a certain sign of full blown retinapathy, where the retina begins to detach.
I was not given a choice in cataract lenses because my doctor knew what was best for me. The new lense killed my reading vision.
The PRP ended after six sessions. Peripteral began receding almost immediately.
I had also not been told that what I had suffered was a vitreous hemorrhage. I had expected the cataract surgery to clear the obstruction of ruddy blood fog. Instead I learned that an entire other pool of blood remained in the center of the eye.
My vision darkened to the edges of the cataract lense as the eye absorbed the vitreous contamination. I coped with this remarkably well, until scar tissue and further retinapathy issues further eroded my remaining vision. The vitreous remained filled with clouds and floaters that accumulated into a still-thickening veil of darkness. The obstruction within my eye inhibits my pupil from working correctly and obscures most color vision.
The retinapathy has advanced beyond the cataract. I have at least one dead spot in my central vision. Now reading is impossible not just for worsening focus issues, but because I really can’t see a set of letters as an entire cohesive word.
I’m still coping, but maybe not as well. The fight to retain any self sufficiency has become a nonstop battle that I can’t seem to win.
I’m conjuring my adolescence, when I didn’t let impossible odds stop me from fighting on.
No comments:
Post a Comment