Monthly Archives: December 2018
I’ve Been Fuch’d . . . Maybe
Yesterday we started off with brunch at our favorite The Egg and I about 1:30 and then it was on up to the Coastal Eye Associates office in the Almeda Mall area just inside the Sam Houston Tollway.
We got there about 2:45, unsure if my appointment was for 3 or 3:30. The appointment card they gave me at my last visit said it was at 3:30, but the robo-call I got on Monday said it was for 3pm.
And the receptionist confirmed it was for 3pm, so of course they didn’t call me in until 20 minutes till 4. Then I spent about an hour being cycled through just about every diagnostic machine in the large office. Then it was back to the waiting room until the doctor could finally see me.
But when he did, he didn’t like the way the scans were done. So it was back around the track again, this time with some gunk in my left eye that felt like heavy weight bearing grease. My nurse, Jennifer, said the doctor sometimes liked to do the tests himself, and he did several this go-round too.
Then it was back out to the waiting room for awhile. By now it was after 5pm and we were still going strong. Finally I was called back in to the doctor’s office to get the diagnosis.
And it was Fuchs’ Dystrophy . . . possibily . . . maybe?
Fuchs’ Dystrophy is a problem where some of the cells of the thin endothelial layer on the inside of the cornea start to die off. This can cause swelling of the cornea leading to blurriness and problems with glare.
And of course I have to buck the trend, since it normally affects more women than men, and usually affects both eyes, And it’s usually inherited and smoking is a factor. But, as far as I know, none of my parents or grandparents had the problem.
When I got my new glasses back in September, the best my left eye could be corrected to was 20/100, while my right eye corrected to 20/20 with no problems. But as the doctor mumbled something about Sam’s Club optometrists, he said that when he checked it, it was corrected to 20/50.
He also said that the problem is very slow progressing, and might not be a real problem before I . . . well, die.
For people who have severe problems with it, i.e., they’re blind, there are only two real solutions – A cornea transplant using a donor cornea, or Descemet’s membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) which is a less-invasive method of just replacing the endothelial layer itself through a small slit in the bottom of the eye.
As for right now, I’ve got some steroid drops for my eyes 4 times a day for a couple of weeks to see if that affects the swelling at all. There’s also the possibility of a soft contact lens that might alleviate the problem somewhat. But that’s all down the road.
For my part I’m just hoping the problem progresses slow enough that I really don’t have to do anything about until it . . . well, I die.
Tomorrow morning Jan and I are heading up to the Spring area to meet up with Debi and Ed Hurlburt, Janice and Dave Evans, Judy and Dick Mott, and maybe others, at the EL Palenque Mexican Restaurant there.
Really looking forward to it.
Thought for the Day:
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” – Clarke’s First Law
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The Eyes Have It . . .
After almost 4 hours at the ophthalmologist’s office, getting pretty much every test on every machine, and a few I think they made up on the fly, along with the drops in my eye and not getting home until almost 8:30, there’s no blog tonight.
So stay turned for tomorrow night’s update.
