Mdma might be the job. Mushrooms are tricky.
Which ones would you recommend?
@Cheasty, would giving up on the eye and either covering it or having it whipped out be an option? Might give you more of a chance to deal with the mental health and tackle it. You’ve already come through the hardest part of it. You’re a good guy. Keep going pal.
Half a bag of utopia is really good
Pajaritos are mild and fun too
1 Like
@Cheasty there is a Chinese doctor in cork worth visiting. She worked wonders for my dad who had Fibromyalgia.
He found out about her from a friend whose child suffers from seizures. His child’s seizures are far less frequent now.
Also she helped another lady I know who suffered fro
tittinus.
I think it would be really worth your time visiting or at least contacting her.
I went to Dixon Hempenstall opticians in Dublin last year and experimented with a few different contact lenses. They offer a contact lens that blocks or dulls the vision in an eye by 20%, then there’s a 40% one, and finally a fully occlusive lens which I think has an eyeball painted on it which basically makes the eye blind when it is in. I tried all these. As soon as I put on the fully occlusive lens I hated it. The eye and how it connects to the brain, it is desperate to see and when the fully occlusive lens is put on, it feels a bit like you’re being suffocated. Obviously it’s advised to persist with any lens you’re given so the brain gets used to it, but after five seconds of the fully occlusive lens I couldn’t stomach it. I ended up getting the 20% occlusive lens but I haven’t worn it very much.
I went to a place in Clane last September and they gave me a sort of wrong prescription contact lens which blurs the distance vision and which could be left in overnight and lasts for 28 days. I persisted with that and wore this type of lens until March, but then my eye started getting sore from it and I stopped. I might try this again but I don’t like having a lens in and towards the end of the time I wore it I was getting really sick of it.
What I do currently is I put a sort of clear tape over the left lens of my glasses, it’s made by 3M, I found it in the shed. It’s a bit like Scotch tape. You’d have to look closely to see that there’s tape on the glasses at all. It dulls the vision in the affected eye a bit, but the eye can still “see”. It’s reasonably effective for close up vision but when I go out of the house it’s not as effective and I start seeing distorted double vision again especially with lamp posts etc. Maybe I could put an extra layer or two of this tape on the glasses. The problem with the tape though is I feel like I’m in a bit of a fog with my overall vision and I’m not particularly confident in my balance. If I deliberately cross my eyes, the affected eye separates diagonally downwards instead of horizontal. When it rests, the vision in the affected eye is slanted inwards towards my nose by about 10 degrees. Cars appear a little bit squished down, like they’re anorexic. Things in the affected eye appear further away than in the good eye.
Doctors say you need to “expose” the eye to sight over a long period if the brain is to have any hope of making sense of the two different images coming from each eye, to “put them together” into binocular single vision. This can be a years long process, if it ever happens. I was told by a very nice woman from Scotland who was practising in Ireland for while about six months ago that “you see with your brain” as well as with your eyes. The idea is that the brain “re-wires” itself over a period of x number of years. I think a lot probably depends on which eye was your dominant eye. I don’t know (because I never experimented before my detached retina) but I suspect my left eye was my more dominant eye. I’ve been told that few people experience the problems I do.
If you get a “macula on” detached retina, your central vision in that eye stands a good chance of remaining the way it was. If you have a macula off detachment, all bets are off. I think the breakdown is roughly 55% get macula on and 45% get macula off. If the detachment happens in your non-dominant eye, it’s not as serious for your overall vision as the dominant eye isn’t affected. I got a macula off detachment in what was probably the dominant eye so it was as severe as you could get. I went 100% blind in about 85-90% of the eye when the problem hit. It happened as I slept at night.
Patching is horrible and it doesn’t “teach” your brain and eye to adapt.
Most people get a cataract at some stage in the two years after the surgery I got but I haven’t got a meaningful cataract so far (I was told three months ago I have a small one) I think because my surgeon deliberately left a sliver of the original vitreous humour attached to my natural eye lens. When (or if) you get the cataract out, you get an artificial intra-ocular lens put in which changes the focus of your eyes, with detached retina patients this lens is usually set for distance vision. Some people say that they are much better after the intra-ocular lens is put in, but the lens doesn’t deal with the distortion because that’s a retinal issue, and the retina is a back of the eye issue as opposed to a front of the eye issue.
My cousin’s wife who is a nurse said “three years”. My surgeon said “two years”. But I don’t know exactly what they meant was supposed to be at the end of those time periods. I’m one month short of two years now.
I don’t believe there’s any eye surgeon out there who would purposely blind the eye. That’s an absolute last resort. There’s a chap I converse with in Australia an odd time who is in a similar-ish boat (though I think he’s in a worse situation than me) and he was saying he heard there was somebody in Singapore who will purposely blind an eye but I have no idea about that really and it seems a very drastic step. There has to be some risk of a detached retina happening in my good eye too (I was told 10% by the clinic at the Regional in Galway).
I heard once through my Mam about a guy from Dublin who had had his fill of eye problems and went over to Liverpool to get his eye out and got the ferry back straight afterwards, but I don’t know what the ins and outs of his situation were.
There are a few elements to all this. 1. Self blame. I still blame myself. I’m certain I would have been OK had I sought any sort of eye examination in the weeks prior to the retina detaching. I didn’t do it because I was mildly depressed and focussed on trivial household matters and I neglected myself almost out of a sense of self-loathing, mixed with inertia, complacency and panic. 2. Lack of information and an obsession with finding information to give me hope, and not finding it. There isn’t much information online about what to expect after a detached retina, because each case is different and no firm prognoses can be given. Much of the information which exists tends far too much towards optimism and it’s very vague. 3. The grimness of the condition itself. Your world is altered. 4. The trauma of the particular circumstances when it happened, I was on my own and first of all dawdled and then panicked. I was in Dublin on my own and it never dawned on me to leg it to the Eye And Ear hospital and instead I got on a train to Galway and my GP’s secretary was panicking when I told her my symptoms saying “oh no” when I told her I was at Portarlington and the other passengers were asking me was I OK and then I only just got into the hospital before the eye clinic closed and they initially didn’t want to see me and I felt I was treated quite coldly.
I think this part is harder because there’s less hope because of the time elapsed. At the start you don’t know what’s ahead of you and you hope that maybe things can come right.
2 Likes
Your eye isn’t the real issue. You know this.
If it wasn’t your eye it would be something else… you need to deal with the real issue.
7 Likes
They’re some seriously moving posts. Nightmarish to be honest. Detached retina? Even the term is like lying down in a bed of ants. And then the dizziness and nausea,you describe. Not as a prospect for a couple of hours but for a (vague) couple of years? It’s just so shit.
Even not knowing you, but knowing people probably just like you, I wish you weren’t going through it.
And then there’s the mental health side of all this. You laid it all out perfectly. All the torturous contributing factors - guilt, shame, anger, fucking injustice, everything.
I’m more patient than doctor here. But please get help. It’s there. The right drugs are there. The right therapy is there. They’re powerful and they work. You don’t have to feel the way you do.
But the bastard of it is, only you can find what does work for you. It’s very personal. And that takes monumental effort which you have to put in at a time when you just don’t fucking want to.
So, small steps. No point thinking about swimming 10 lengths when you’re drowning. All your effort for now into getting your head above water to catch a breath. But it’ll take all your effort. No-one else can do it for you. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a few that would if they could but they can’t. If you’re not so lucky, then summon that anger and drive on to fuck for you and no-one else. There’s better for you, even with the shit show that is your eyes.
I was thinking of your posts last night when I was watching my young fella playing a junior soccer match. The standard was shite, the ref was shite, the losing team hit the post 4 times i 1minutes, the winning goalie made saves that were so amazing, they were clearly by accident. The losing team were so much better that their coaches (5 of the cunts btw) weren’t even angry. I have no idea how we lost that game, they said. But it was oddly the most satisfying match I’ve watched in years. I think we’ve gone wrong looking for better all the time. Everyone there has a total fucking blast.
Make the first call anyway old shtock. Pieta house 1800 247 247. Why the fuck not.
11 Likes
Thanks for that post. I’ve rang the Pieta House and the Samaritans helplines plenty of times although not for a while now, I’d say it’s getting on for a year at least since I last rang. I had about six in person counselling sessions with Pieta House mostly before Christmas 2022 but I ended up in the hospital over that Christmas (it wasn’t anything to do with the counselling) and when I got out the sessions ended on the basis that after getting out of the hospital I had to attend a place called Lá Nua, they call it the “day hospital” and they don’t want different counsellors cutting across each other. I couldn’t face the Lá Nua sessions any more after about four weekly visits to it.
I went intermittently to a sort of talk therapy cafe thing opposite the hospital from about February to September last year but again it’s nearly a year since I’ve been.
I did three “courses” offered through the psychiatric services, one called “Decider Skills” last autumn (I quite enjoyed this one), Anxiety Management in March/April and I had a three week course there over the last few weeks about creating a “safety plan” for when you’re at risk. This is mostly fairly basic stuff though and to a large extent it’s a box ticking exercise.
I was seeing a psychiatrist roughly every two months there in the hospital but the problem with that is you often get a completely new person when you attend. The last time I went in July I had a new person and they didn’t seem particularly interested in me and now the next appointment isn’t until late November.
I agree that nobody else can make things better except yourself. That was said to me by a male nurse the first morning I was in the hospital.
5 Likes
Yeah I know exactly what you mean. All sorts of services doing their best, but the continuity wouldn’t be great. And that’s essential.
Can you afford private? Between 80 and 200 snots a week for six weeks. I mean can you? Could you sell a car? If so do it. If not, say so.
Tons of lads would cough up here. I’d throw in whatever what I could get through the family finance committee (f@&cking nazis). Bet others would too.
1 Like
I appreciate that, it’s very kind but you don’t have to do that.
I got approved for disability allowance there a couple of weeks ago and there should be a bit of money in back payments coming in this week from the original time of application which is over six months ago.
I forgot to say they offered me a 26 week DBT (dialectical behavioural therapy) course there in April but I was doing the anxiety management course at the time which was eight weeks and was finding it a grind and I just couldn’t face six months of a course which requires proper effort so I didn’t take that one up. I think this course runs twice a year so I’d say there’s a chance they’ll get onto me again.
1 Like
Kyle loves you more than all these earnest, affirming, sympathetic agreeable fellas. You’ve veen dealt a very bad hand, but there are kids in cancer wards with a worse fate, and with a braver disposition. Easy for me to say, i suppose.
But i think you need to focus on something other than yourself. What about sucking it up and bluffing some cheerfulness, just for your mother’s peace of mind? Wouldn’t that make you feel better about yourself. Or what about some charity work…for the blind maybe?
There’s fuck all to be saif for angrily typing at the abyss, which is how you seem to spend your days. Is it any wonder you’re fed up? The world isn’t going to align itself with your thinking, all you can do is look after yourself and those around you. Mind your own isness, so to speak.
2 Likes
This is some piece of work all the same
6 Likes
Bloody hell!
Well I’d say most on here would contribute if finance is an issue. You have a serious talent that is wasted on us. It deserves a wider audience.
Think I posted that before it is unbelievable stuff
2 Likes
I’ve seen a couple of his videos… edgy stuff…the other one was about domestic violence
Having crazy withdrawal from the Lexipro. I’ve never been so agitated.
Send some on
2 Likes
Are you getting the brain zaps yet, when you feel your getting electric shocks to the brain? If I hadn’t experienced so many of those coming off ecstacy binges over the years, which is also a serotonin affecting chemical, I would definitely have thought the end was nigh.