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I have not been looking at the Dry Eye Zone much these past couple of months, and the main reason for that is that dry eyes have not been dominating our lives to the same extent as they had been for most of the previous 4 years.
Instead in this period we have watched more hours of TV than we had watched on the previous 2 years. In that last 4 weeks we have binge watched the entire 6 seasons of Breaking Bad including spending 7 hours watching the final season in one sitting. And my wife was still able to function the next day.
She is also using the computer again (an awful lot) and her use of OTC drops has fallen away dramatically. In fact, the last time she had an eight hour shift at her work (library) she said she didn’t put any drops in at all. (In the past she was dropping every 30 minutes).
She is not cured, certainly. She still has bad days, especially when the humidity is low outside and she still cannot tolerate wind. She still cannot drive and sitting in a car, whilst improved, still poses a challenge. She still has feelings of grittiness and pain but this is now after effectively “abusing her eyes” doing things she has not been able to do for most of the past few years.
She is much improved. She usually says she feels about 30% better but from my point of view the improvement seems more dramatic.
What has caused this improvement? In the past year she has undergone 8 IPL treatments and, as this is really the only difference in her treatment, we can only conclude that IPL is working.
IPL is not a cure, it only teats the symptoms of MGD and Kathy will have to have continuous “maintenance” treatments to keep her where she is – for her, that will be every 3 months, or so it seems at present.
And we have not given up on other treatments. In fact Kathy is about to start with autologous serum eye drops, and she is also very keen to try AMX (or whatever it is called now) as soon as it becomes available. But at least with IPL, life seems a lot better that it was before.
Instead in this period we have watched more hours of TV than we had watched on the previous 2 years. In that last 4 weeks we have binge watched the entire 6 seasons of Breaking Bad including spending 7 hours watching the final season in one sitting. And my wife was still able to function the next day.
She is also using the computer again (an awful lot) and her use of OTC drops has fallen away dramatically. In fact, the last time she had an eight hour shift at her work (library) she said she didn’t put any drops in at all. (In the past she was dropping every 30 minutes).
She is not cured, certainly. She still has bad days, especially when the humidity is low outside and she still cannot tolerate wind. She still cannot drive and sitting in a car, whilst improved, still poses a challenge. She still has feelings of grittiness and pain but this is now after effectively “abusing her eyes” doing things she has not been able to do for most of the past few years.
She is much improved. She usually says she feels about 30% better but from my point of view the improvement seems more dramatic.
What has caused this improvement? In the past year she has undergone 8 IPL treatments and, as this is really the only difference in her treatment, we can only conclude that IPL is working.
IPL is not a cure, it only teats the symptoms of MGD and Kathy will have to have continuous “maintenance” treatments to keep her where she is – for her, that will be every 3 months, or so it seems at present.
And we have not given up on other treatments. In fact Kathy is about to start with autologous serum eye drops, and she is also very keen to try AMX (or whatever it is called now) as soon as it becomes available. But at least with IPL, life seems a lot better that it was before.
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