Could you check yourself in again? You could live a life without an eye but you can’t live a life in the mental state you’re in.
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I don’t want to do this as I’d likely have to miss my appointments which are in Dublin and to do with the eye, one of them with one of the top retina people in Ireland, and I don’t want to wait at A&E for 12 hours to possibly or possibly not be admitted and I don’t want to have to eat the hospital food again and I don’t want to be trapped in that internal garden in the middle of the building again, where you can’t see out and can do nothing but smoke, or behind that wall again, and I don’t want to have to deal with people out of their minds pestering me for my vape pipe again. I have a prescription for an anti-depressant Sertraline since March 8th but haven’t used it, I’ve been off all tablets since February. I don’t know if the prescription is still valid. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to go off all tablets but at the same time I don’t know if it’s made any difference, probably not, I was like this anyway when I was on them.
I went down to A&E on the 25th about 6:30pm but the place was out the door and I just went over to a step in front of one of the hospital buildings and sat there for half an hour before walking home.
I had an appointment with the HSE psychiatrist on April 19th, but I didn’t go, I wasn’t able to go. I couldn’t do it, I was paranoid because I’d done none of the “homework” she’d asked me to do, so I hid behind the couch. The hospital is 15 minutes walk away. She told me before I had “adjustment disorder”. This is just a fancy name for being utterly devastated at losing your physical health. Thanks for that.
I have the eye and can see through it but it doesn’t see the same as the other eye. I’ve had double vision for over seven months now. I’m told I have 20/30 visual acuity in the eye but this is bollocks because it’s only a quantitative measure of one eye and doesn’t take distortion into account and doesn’t take how the eyes work together into account. Most of the medical literature on this subject is flagrant lying by omission. Every prescription for glasses I’ve got has been a failure.
There is almost nothing in the available literature about double vision after vitrectomy and the literature effectively tells you it doesn’t happen and only happens after a scleral buckle which I did not have.
The literature about non-conventional double vision is very disheartening. Conventional double vision is strabismus. Non-conventional double vision, which I have, is also called non-paretic diplopia. There are fearsome sounding conditions like dragged fovea diplopia syndrome or retinal misregistration or central-peripheral rivalry syndrome and I fear I have all of those things and that will probably mean occlusion of the eye. They count occlusion as a “treatment”. That’s like counting a wheelchair as a treatment for paralysis.
At the start of all this people tried to reassure me that great things could be done with the eyes and it’s all been bollocks so far and will likely prove to be bollocks.
Why don’t you ask if you’d be let out for your eye appointments? You were given a prescription for a reason, you’re not helping yourself not taking it and you’re not helping yourself by missing appointments with people that can help you. They’re not going to scold you for not doing your homework. Take the help.
They’re useless
The meds certainly can’t be any use if you don’t take them and the docs can’t be of any use if you won’t meet them.
Are you holding out hope that the eye can be fixed @Cheasty, have any eye doctors told you that it may be temporary?
I’m not going to patronize you in any way, you know that you are admired by many/most of the posters on TFK for whatever that means, I’ve said before that your salvation is in writing, you’re gifted and you have an extraordinary talent for nostalgic pieces, I’m certain there’s a route for you there.
Listen, hang in there
When I was walking into Oranmore that evening, it was very sunny, and the sun was behind me as I walked against the traffic on the hard shoulder. I was actually taking care not get knocked down and was hogging the wall. When I was coming close to Oranmore, but in an area where there was still no footpath, a girl maybe in her early 20s passed me. She was walking on the same side as me, but in the same direction as the traffic. She hogged the broken yellow line. The traffic going past her was facing into a strong sun. I thought about saying something to her, that the way she was walking was dangerous, but I didn’t. After she had passed me, she kept hogging the yellow line, almost on the road. I don’t know was she suicidal, but she did a good impression of somebody who wanted to be hit by a car. I hope she’s alright.
I sincerely hope your eye makes a full recovery Cheasty. However what is your plan or have you considered what you will do if it does not recover?
I do not know at this stage. I’m desperate for the eye to be fixed back to the way it was, or at least to a state where it does not cause me constant double vision and undermines my quality of life, but I do not know if it is realistic. At the start I was told that my eye would likely get back to 95% but that seems pie in the sky. I don’t know should I have been told that. I don’t even know what 95% means.
The central part of the retina, the most important part of the retina, is called the fovea. If you have a retinal detachment which detaches the fovea, and I did, results tend to be worse. But results can go badly in different ways. Most people don’t get double vision. I have. With a lot of people who have a foveal detachment, their quantitative visual acuity may be bad, they might have 20/100 or 20/200. But mine is measured at around 20/30. With the people who have bad visual acuity, they may not notice the distortion because their vision is too hazy to do so. Mine isn’t. My bad eye is even overriding the good eye in some circumstances because the vitreous humour has been removed. I have no floaters in the eye.
The impression I get from my research is that it’s rare for the distortion to resolve. I would much rather have poorer visual acuity but for things to be in alignment, ie. no double vision, no slanted vision.
When I was seen by my surgeon, I was told that recovery could not be going better. This was in December. But my surgeon only looked into my eye through my pupil with what is called a slit lamp. You cannot tell what the vision is like from that, you can only tell what the retina is like. My belief is that surgeons only care abut whether they have done their job, which is to reattach the retina. They aren’t particularly concerned about whether the vision is good. I don’t think they care about visual distortion, or they think they can’t do anything about it anyway so it doesn’t concern them much. They only care about anatomical reattachment of the retina. And you only get a couple of minutes with them. My appointment to see the retina specialist in Dublin might only last five minutes. All that build up and then you get no time and freeze.
I know because I’ve gone to get OCT scans several times and got them sent on to me, that I have a form of scar tissue on my retina, it’s called an epiretinal membrane. I do not know if it is causing or contributing to the distortion or double vision. I suspect it may be but it is not the whole story. In my own mind I want surgery to remove this epiretinal membrane. This would involve three big needles and funnels being stuck in the white of the eye and a pliers going into the back of the eye - but from a situation where that sort of thing sounds frightening, I now see it as frightening that I might not be offered that surgery. To me it seems surgeons are inherently conservative as regards this surgery and try to discourage it, preferring only to operate as a last resort, often with bad results for the patient, when earlier intervention would likely yield much better results.
I’m afraid to go back and see my surgeon because it was a trial to get a referral for a second opinion from him.
I have an appointment to see an orthoptist - whose speciality is resolving double vision - but the nature of my double vision is not conventional, and I don’t believe she’ll be able to do anything for me.
There’s a thing called a neuro-ophalmologist, the best known one is Lorraine Cassidy, whether a neuro-opthalmologist could do anything for me or not I don’t know.
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This is the surgery here I’m desperate to get.
Pal, you really need to put the effort into mental health that you’re putting into your eye. You need to go to the professionals.
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My mental health is entirely dependent on my eye health. This isn’t normal depression where mental health professionals can make a difference. This has been clear to me from dealing with mental health people. They don’t know what to do. They know nothing about eyes. This isn’t like a bereavement where there are always coping mechanisms, small things you can take enjoyment from. This is way, way, way worse than a bereavement. In some ways a bereavement brings you out of yourself. You cry but you can laugh. There is no laughing with this and it makes you retreat from a world that is closed off from you. The reality is you exist through your head and your eyes. If you have constant double vision and see science fiction dystopia type lines and shapes you have no relief and no life. You’re trapped in a mental torture zone. Everything becomes a ghost of previous life. It’s worse again when you’ve done it to yourself through criminal medical negligence. The only possible relief is recovery of your sight, the erasing of the mistake. I’ve read through lots of stuff posted by people in similarish situations to me and it’s common for people to say they’d have preferred to lose the sight in that eye altogether. I don’t know is that true in my case, probably not, but it’s a thought that frequently crosses my mind. It would be a simpler and more clear cut situation anyway. You wouldn’t be hanging on desperately hoping to recover, and you wouldn’t have distorted vision from one eye buggering your whole field of vision.
Why cant you wear a patch over the ‘bad’ eye? Have you tried it?
Yes, it’s uncomfortable, it’s pointless and to have any chance of getting the eyes to work together ever again, you need to expose the eye.
I put clear 3M tape over the lens of my glasses to “dull” the double vision.
Double vision at this stage is not normal. I curse my luck that I’m one of the one in 300 to get a detached retina in their lives, one of the one in 700 to get a macula off retinal detachment in their lives, one of the one in God knows how many to have been left with persistent double vision after a macula off retinal detachment. At 43 years of age and without being in the typical profile for it. This shit is not supposed to happen and I’ll never not be extremely bitter it has.
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Power lines, fucking power lines. Houses on the left side of the street leaning forward like they want to whisper in your ear and houses on the right side of the street lying back, sunning themselves in the rain. Urghhhh.
What exactly do you mean by this? Because they’re not rushing to return your eyesight to its original status I’m guessing. Why haven’t I won the lotto? - I didn’t buy a ticket is the answer.
You’re not helping yourself. I can understand your angst because you inadvertently brought this on yourself. You’ll have to trust the process I’m afraid, it’s unlikely to adjust itself.
You might, when you’re finished solving local and international issues, spare a thought for your mother who, at her age in life and having recently lost her husband is now faced with another ticking bomb.
Get whatever help is available, take the medication and see where it takes you. There are umpteen things that would have left you in a far, far worse position. You strike me as an educated man who’s had a relative cushy ride thus far and apart from your dad’s passing, this is your 1st life crisis. You’ll just have to accept the situation and rise above it. Give your mother a break and accept it for what it is - a setback.
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There was a 1 in about 500,000 chance of our little fella being born with his life limiting condition. He got progressively sicker from the day he was born.
I’m not trying to make light of your eye condition. It sucks and no one here can empathise with you.
However, you have a lot of positives in your life. Try as best you can to focus on these.
I dont intend this to be condesending. You’re a great guy, and we all want you to get better.
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The dirty little truth of disability is we only want to know disabled people who are “brave”. Jamie Wall and Joanne O’Riordan are fine because they have a publicly positive attitude. Christopher Reeve, isn’t he so inspirational.
If people are not brave, and they dwell inside on what they’ve lost and their fears and their anguish, and how there is no relief, that’s too tough for other people.
Able bodied people only want to put disabled or sick people in a neat little box titled “bravery”. If they don’t tick that box, people walk away as if the disabled or sick person is a beggar on the street, It’s too uncomfortable. I was like this before all this happened.
I’m not brave and I’m not inspirational and I don’t have a positive attitude because I’m not willing to delude myself about the reality of living with this, that it will be in any way the same life I had, or that it will be a good life. It’ll be a shit half-life filled with regret and remorse and bitterness. That’s why I think that in the absence of a recovery it’d be a good idea for me to toddle off and not be a burden on anybody else.
Thanks for the reply. There are thousands in this country would trade their infirmities for yours.
Think about it. You’re not accustomed to a reversal, there’s part of the problem right there.
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This is extremely unlikely.
The distortion sounds like torture, I don’t mean to diminish that. But you know you could live with one eye, a suicide response isn’t rational, that’s mental illness.
You’re dealing with two problems, you really need to take two tracks at the same time, you really need to take the mental health assistance too.
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