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Okay! I have been poked and prodded and eyedropped and dilated and photographed and had all sorts of things done to my poor poor eyes.
So. Story is this:
My eye pressure is up by three points in one eye, two in the other.
However, I'm not immediately at risk for the specific kind of glaucoma that Topamax causes. Because Topamax causes a very specific kind: angle-closure glaucoma. What I'm borderline for is open-angle glaucoma, which is Different.
Yeah, I just nodded and smiled, too.
She says that the pain would be a lot worse if I was developing angle-closure, and the pressure would shoot up - it'd be up by 40 (I think) points, not 3. But she'd feel more comfortable, seeing as my eye pressure is borderline and growing, if I wasn't on Topamax. Acknowledging, of course, that she's not my neurologist, but y'know, if I could do okay on another drug that's not going to raise my eye pressure three points in just a few weeks, that would be cool.
I did see her fairly recently, just a few months ago. So. She had a recent reference point.
She also took a reading of my corneal thickness. I have thick corneas. Which is apparently A Good Thing, as thick corneas can withstand more eye pressure. Go me!
I'm going in for another Humphries Visual Field Test next week. Flashy lights all over! Woo! This will be more definitive.
I s'pose I'll go leave voicemail for my neurologist now.
So. Story is this:
My eye pressure is up by three points in one eye, two in the other.
However, I'm not immediately at risk for the specific kind of glaucoma that Topamax causes. Because Topamax causes a very specific kind: angle-closure glaucoma. What I'm borderline for is open-angle glaucoma, which is Different.
Yeah, I just nodded and smiled, too.
She says that the pain would be a lot worse if I was developing angle-closure, and the pressure would shoot up - it'd be up by 40 (I think) points, not 3. But she'd feel more comfortable, seeing as my eye pressure is borderline and growing, if I wasn't on Topamax. Acknowledging, of course, that she's not my neurologist, but y'know, if I could do okay on another drug that's not going to raise my eye pressure three points in just a few weeks, that would be cool.
I did see her fairly recently, just a few months ago. So. She had a recent reference point.
She also took a reading of my corneal thickness. I have thick corneas. Which is apparently A Good Thing, as thick corneas can withstand more eye pressure. Go me!
I'm going in for another Humphries Visual Field Test next week. Flashy lights all over! Woo! This will be more definitive.
I s'pose I'll go leave voicemail for my neurologist now.
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Myself included. I've pretty much resigned myself to having it... just a matter of when. My Granny and my Mother both were medicated for it, and my Granny required laser surgery.
Both of them retained their sight, though, which is a blessing I hope to keep.
/babble.
Hi 'Song. =)
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Hi Helly. :)
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Side note: cookies? Have you sent them out yet? Don't want to pester overly much...
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Sent out cookies yesterday. Delay is due entirely to the fact that I suck. I'm sorry. :(
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Yes, but your visitor wasn't complaining, was he? ;)
No worries, lady! I just wanted to make sure that my shipping department hadn't gotten them and eaten them for me!
As for the glaucoma, they didn't catch it in her early. She was having headaches and described what she saw as "Starry Night" the painting because everything had halos. Just after getting married, she and my father took her to an eye doctor on her 22nd birthday. She didn't have a readable pressure. It was that high. He sent her to an opthamologist right away, and thus began the surgery stuff. Unfortunatly, it's stories like that that bring about big change... like glaucoma tests at optometrists and even cheap mall eye doctors. Back in the 70's, no one thought to look!
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Mmmm. No. No, that didn't sound like complaining to me. *grin*
She didn't have a readable pressure. It was that high.
Wow!
No, they caught me at borderline eye pressure and malformed optic nerves with a routine exam - I've worn glasses since I was eight, but I'd been wearin the *same* glasses for about four years and was getting headaches, so I was getting a new pair with tax-return money. And the eye doctor said, "Umm..."
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The difference between closed and open-angle glaucoma is pretty simple-- there's a drainage system in the back of your eye (called the trabecular meshwork). There's a chamber between your cornea and your iris called the angle. Fluid in the eye flows through the angle and into the trabecular meshwork to get drained away.
If your angle is narrow already (there's not much space in that chamber), you run a risk of the iris opening and blocking the transit of fluid through the angle. The trabecular meshwork gets blocked by the iris, the angle fills with fluid, your eye pressure shoots up, you get flashes of light and blurred vision, sometimes your eye will look very red and the cornea will be cloudy, and it'll probably hurt a great deal. This is a grade-A ophthalmic emergency, and you should be on the phone to your doc's emergency line ASAP-- people have lost their sight from acute closed-angle glaucoma very rapidly, in some cases in one or two days.
Fortunately, only 20 percent of the cases of glaucoma are closed-angle. It's more common in Inuits and folks of Asian descent, and in people who are farsighted. It's also treatable with medications and/or laser surgery as long as it's caught fast enough.
Open-angle glaucoma is the Boring Regular Chronic Kind. While your angle is great and open and allows clear transit of fluid, your trabecular meshwork is partially blocked from other problems-- could be a hemorrhage in your eye that filled it with blood (which it isn't used to transporting), could be scar tissue, could just be the progress of age. The fluid builds up slowly, the pressure rises slowly, and the symptoms are far less noticeable. It's usually not painful, it does present as flashes, it can still make you blind if you're not careful about management. Fortunately, it works about the same way as closed-angle issues and is a lot more manageable with careful testing and care-- there are plenty of eyedrops that lower chronically high pressure, there are diuretic medications for management of crises, there's laser surgery for clearing blocked meshwork or creating new drainage.
Open-angle glaucoma is a term applied to a set of conditions that all have related features of visual-field damage, nerve damage, etc. One of them, which you might find interesting, is low-tension glaucoma, where the pressure never gets very high, but everything else looks like open-angle glaucoma caused by high pressure-- optic nerve deformity, nerve fiber damage, reduced visual field. According to this article, it's suspected that the cause is reduced blood flow to the optic nerves.
You might read up:
Open-angle glaucoma
Narrow-angle glaucoma
Low-tension glaucoma
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50? Ow. I'm at 24 in one eye, 22 in the other right now, which is above normal - what's normal? I guess of everything that's wrong with me, I know the *least* about this, because it's the thing that's the least likely to just suddenly kill me. (Read up on SUDEP (http://www.crazymeds.org/anticonvulsantsSUDEP.shtml) sometime.)
I can deal with Boring Regular Chronic; I can manage this if management = what it = thus far, meaning once-yearly visits to the nice doctor and her shiny machines. That's low-impact. :)
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The range of eye fuckery here has gone from 7mm Hg (torn retina, goo leaking out of back of eye into inside of head, not good) to 50mm Hg (lots of things that shouldn't have been there taking too long to filter out of my meshwork, not good).
As of last weekend, though, I'm at 18 in the left eye and 13 in the right. So, there, I'm proof that anyone can get through this shit. :)
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Aaaaaagh! That just made me want to dive through the computer and fix you, put stuff back where it goes, put a band-aid on, kiss better.
I have monkey band-aids.
The monkeys are wearing fezes. (fezzes?)
Go you!
I am going to get off the Topamax. It is clearly not good for my eyes.
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Retinal repair is *not* any fun. At all.
We've got Pooh bandaids. The Tigger ones are favorites around here. :)
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I've noticed my flashers, dimming, and auras (for lack of a better word) getting worse and kept meaning to go to something better than the mall eye doctor about it... but reading about glaucoma has inspired me to do something about it.
If ye see plaid on a cloudy day, there's somethin wrong with yer eyes, darnit!
I'm researching a good eye doc tonight and making an appointment tomorrow!
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Ya know how you just get used to feeling a certain way and it flips your world when someone points out that it isn't "normal"? Oh wait... yea, you do. ;-)
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*fierce hug*
Yeah, I do.
Good luck at the doc tomorrow, hon. Report back!
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Get someone to drive you home, though; you're going to have dilated pupils and light sensitivity. Good luck. :)
(I'm not a doctor; I've had Serious Eye Issues-- glaucoma, cataracts and surgery for same, retinal tear and surgical repair of same, among other problems-- for four years now, and an absolute master of an ophthamologist caring for me. I'm pretty hardcore about this sort of thing.)
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I've been living with all the little wonkiness' for so long, that I just didn't notice how much things had changed until I sat down to write it out.
I tend to become shy with docs. But I'm going to speak out. Blindness has always been one of my biggest fears.
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That almost makes it worth it, doesn't it?