MG dying as I'm watching?

[wissen1]

Hello everyone,

last week I had a meibography and out of curiousity I took a few smartphone pictures of my glands right before it. My MGs are pretty visible even under normal lighting conditions. So I compared my pictures to my 5 year old pictures. Everything looks exactly like 5 years ago with one exception, one gland looks shortened, but still very visible and white on the picture.
So today (one week later) I made a new photo and the gland which has been shortening over the last few years is now barely visible on the photo anymore. Now my 3 questions are: is it even possible for a MG to fade this quickly now, within days? Can irritation cause redness which overlays the gland so its visibility is worse right now? Does meibography show glands if they are overlaid by blood vessels?
I'm super worried what's happening here, because the left eye is already my worse eye and I'm battling for every single gland.

P.S.: I'm going to share my smartphone pictures when I get home.

[deep_dry_eye]

MGs typically take months-years to shorten.

It's most likely possible the lighting conditions are different, and that's why it appears shorter. Even the way you pull down the eyelid can cause a lot of variance.

What treatments are you on? Are you taking steps to tackle the inflammation?

[wissen1]

Let me clarify, the shortening must have happened during the last 5 years. But now the shortened gland also looks like it's completely fading from whitish to redish a.k.a. no meibum left in it and that's what appears to be happening in the last week.

I'm on no prescription medication. Artificial tears, lid hygiene twice a day (no warming since it's seem to trouble my eyes pretty badly everytime) and I try to do regular blinking exercises.

The doctor said in general my meibum looks pretty OK and obstructions if present on a gland are very mild, nothing that couldn't clear itself up. He's a DE specialist and also offers expression, but he didn't see an indication for me. I just seem to have very little meibum and tear production.
That's why I'm pretty anxious about this gland now. I can't lose anymore gland area.

[deep_dry_eye]

Are you sure you have a good doctor? I would consult more doctors. This is key. Many doctors claim they are specialist.

Does your doctor IPL? LipiFlow? If they don't -- that's a sign they're not a specialist.

You should be on prescription meds to control the inflammation: cyclosporine (cequa is best on market), xiidra, topical azithromycin (azyter) are all good safe options.

Which country are you located? I feel like you need to see a better doctor.

[wissen1]

Yes, he offers IPL, gland expression and gland probing and all the available diagnostics for tear film osmolarity, lipild layer thickness, etc.. I think LipiFlow is slowly dying out on the market. I have a feeling that it's just too expensive for what it does, so it's rare to find anyone that offers it at all.
I did a cycle of Ciclosporine, but I had the feeling it didn't help me much. The day after I quit it my eyes instantly felt better. I might have to look into the other available choices. And I personally wouldn't call an immune suppressor a "safe" option, from my experience no matter what problem you're tackling with this kind of medication it's always the last choice because it's asking for trouble in the long trun. Higher susceptibility for tumors is only one of them.
I'm in germany btw.

[Rebecca Petris]

Does your doctor IPL? LipiFlow? If they don't -- that's a sign they're not a specialist.

I need to disagree with this. We can't deem doctors non-specialists based on whether they do one specific treatment or another. There are some really good doctors out there that don't do either of those treatments.

[wissen1]

Turned out it was a temporary redness that caused the MG to look like it was fading. Just to clear things up here.