Depressed with all my challenges

[Cathy]

I have a lot to be grateful for, but my life has been filled with many many challenges. And I am feeling very sorry for myself about that and now my eyes. I have irritable bowel syndrome and have my whole life,had OCD and a gambling problem, and also pelvic floor dsyfunction. All of these issues I have worked very hard about and all of them have been resolved except the IBS and I have learned to live with that.

But now I feel like I did with all the rest of it...that my dry eyes are hopeless, that it will never get better, that doctors don't listen to me, that I will eventually not be able to work or will be in extreme pain.

My eyes have gotten much worse in the last year. I don't have a diagnosis yet, but have recently gone into menopause so maybe that is PART of it. Although there are certainly a lot of women my age I know and not another one has an issue with her eyes! I had plugs and they helped a lot and then as I explained in another post one kept falling out and they cauterized the lower right and since then not much is going well. I use a humidifier all night long and use gel on my bad eye especially.

Drops for some reason always make me feel worse...any drops and I have tried all different...Systane and Thera Tears for example. But it seems that when the drops go in they are a second of relief but then they evaporate and that action feels terrible,like the evaporation is taking more wetness with it than just the drops.

When my eyes tear, they do seem different in the last year, what with feeling itchy and burning. When I had tear overflow for a couple days with an upper plug it felt good to have wet eyes but the tears were so burning.

Can anyone give me any other advice or comfort?

Cathy

[blessings]

I definitely know how you feel. I sleep with tranquileyes at night, and use soothe ointment in each eye also. On October 2nd I had lipiflow done at Duke. Still waiting to see if that has made a difference.

I have a lot to be grateful for, but my life has been filled with many many challenges. And I am feeling very sorry for myself about that and now my eyes. I have irritable bowel syndrome and have my whole life,had OCD and a gambling problem, and also pelvic floor dsyfunction. All of these issues I have worked very hard about and all of them have been resolved except the IBS and I have learned to live with that.

But now I feel like I did with all the rest of it...that my dry eyes are hopeless, that it will never get better, that doctors don't listen to me, that I will eventually not be able to work or will be in extreme pain.

My eyes have gotten much worse in the last year. I don't have a diagnosis yet, but have recently gone into menopause so maybe that is PART of it. Although there are certainly a lot of women my age I know and not another one has an issue with her eyes! I had plugs and they helped a lot and then as I explained in another post one kept falling out and they cauterized the lower right and since then not much is going well. I use a humidifier all night long and use gel on my bad eye especially.

Drops for some reason always make me feel worse...any drops and I have tried all different...Systane and Thera Tears for example. But it seems that when the drops go in they are a second of relief but then they evaporate and that action feels terrible,like the evaporation is taking more wetness with it than just the drops.

When my eyes tear, they do seem different in the last year, what with feeling itchy and burning. When I had tear overflow for a couple days with an upper plug it felt good to have wet eyes but the tears were so burning.

Can anyone give me any other advice or comfort?

Cathy

[Cathy]

any other comments?

I have tried so hard the last few weeks to do everything Rebecca says in her advice..like not thinking too far in the future and catastraphyizing (spelling!).
But the last few weeks have been so difficult. it seems like everything is getting much worse even though I have been doing a lot to make changes.

I have had much success at night when my eyes were at their worst. I use gel in both of them and have a humidifier all the time and things are much better. But during the day things are really not good. It is one or the other of my eyes that are so dry and hurt to even hold them open. I also have a lot of redness on my eyelids.

I haven't been diagnosed with anything yet and that is kind of frustrating cuz i am not very good with doctors and getting ansswers. I always feel they just brush me off. I think Rebecca is right though that it is up to us mainly to research things and get answers here. I know she means to go to doctors but not to expect instant results.
But i so worry since every day is worse.
I have only worked 1 year of the last 3 because of layoffs and now have a temp job that is a good one. And I am interviewing but I feel like such an old squinty lady when I am at work and on an interview.

[kandykane1544]

Hey Cathy,

I understand what you are going through, just hang in there. I am a college student, and 2 months ago when my eyes were at their worst, there wasn't an hour that went by I didn't think about dropping out of school and just giving up. On one end, there are things to remain hopeful about. Dry eye is starting to get a substantial amount of attention in the medical community and their will be more and more medicine and/or treatments for people like us in the future. For instance, yesterday I posted an article about a Dr. who is currently doing research on reversing dry eye syndrome via stem cells.

Clearly you're worst symptom is your eyes, but to me, the fact that you have IBS put up another red flag. I am a strong believer that everything in the body, and in nature as a whole, are interrelated. I mean heck look at what a one degree increase in ocean temperatures can do to storms (Hurricane Sandy). I strongly suggest you read a book called The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf. I am not going to go into details about the book, because once I get started I won't stop haha, but I promise you it will be worth your time. I know what you are probably thinking, "but I have eye problems, what does my diet have to do with any of this?" What I believe, as do thousands of other very intelligent scientists, is that ones diet directly correlates and in many cases is the underlying cause of inflammatory conditions.

Please read the book, it does not take more than a few hours to complete. I promise that it will help you and change the way you approach treating this disease. Soon, there will be even better medical treatments to help people like us, but even still, there are already a lot of helpful treatments out there if you just know where to look.