Tips for getting through hard dry eye days

Are you making mental wellbeing a priority?

Depression. A majority of people who go through a severe dry eye crisis experience clinical depression and/or anxiety. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you're "not coping well". That's nonsense. It is normal for a severe dry eye crisis to seriously rock you for a variety of very legitimate reasons. Pain; fear of the future; and lack of validation from medical professionals probably top the list. You may need to address depression...

Maybe your eyes are always red and gritty in the morning. Maybe you wake during the night with pain and have to re-apply drops or goop. Maybe you get recurrent erosions.

Why are nights so bad for us?
Here are some reasons:

• Aqueous tear production decreases during sleep.
• Heating, a/c and ceiling fans cause dry eye to swirl around over our eyes, increasing evaporative loss.
• Inadequate lipids in our tear film (from blepharitis/MGD) can impair its ability to keep itself

...

Are you new to dry eye misery? Or have you hit a new stage that you’re struggling to come to grips with? Perhaps you’re on your second or third doctor and still aren’t feeling better. Perhaps you’re reading the wrong kind of stories on DryEyeTalk and are getting scared and discouraged. Perhaps you’ve tried the classic drops, steroids, Restasis, plugs etc and are still getting worse. Maybe you have a drawer full of artificial tear rejects. Maybe your doctor so far doesn’t even seem to think th...

If you have simply been told you "have dry eyes", you have not been diagnosed!

Correct and thorough diagnosis is absolutely critical to successful treatment of any ocular surface disease.

WHY YOU NEED MORE DETAIL If you have been told you have dry eye, the first thing you need to understand is that "dry eye" is not a diagnosis."Dry eye" is a catch-all term for several ocular surface conditions, each of which have many possible underlying causes. The symptoms of al...

“But there certainly are not so many rich men in the world as there are pretty girls to deserve them.” – Jane Austen The Truly Great Dry Eye Doctor is a bit like Sir Thomas Bertram, isn’t he? There just don’t seem to be enough to go around. Some few of you have managed to bag one: The doctor who knows an awful lot, is involved in the most current research, is kind and sympathetic, listens well, takes the initiative with finding you new treatments but also likes educated patients and is perfect...

(Or, “Everything I’ve learned over the years from Dr. Brown and DEZ members about eye doctors and their patients”.)

1. Is this article for me?
Yes. I started writing this article with certain types of patients in mind... perhaps most of all the chronically dissatisfied doctor shoppers. But there are ideas here which may help almost all dry eye patients (including those who are not unhappy with their doctor) to get more out of the relationship with their doctor. And even ...

There is a dark, dark place where many of our members have been during some part of their dry eye journey and where some of you are right now. It's a place of shock, of deep depression, of sometimes paralyzing anxiety. It's a place where you are consumed with fear that things will never, ever get better. It's a place where you obsessively compare your situation with the others posting on the boards, alert to every shred of similarity between your situation and that of someone else who has be...