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As a few of you may know from my thread in the eye surgery forum, I rather stupidly elected to have Lasek just over five months ago and, although the outcome was successful insofar as I have 20/15 vision, I ve been suffering from very dry eyes ever since.
To cut a long story short, I seem to have an aqueous deficiency in both eyes, although my left eye is by far the most painful. I was also diagnosed with MGD a few weeks ago and was put on steroids drops and eyelid cream with 100mg of doxycycline daily to try and sort that out. Whilst that seems to be settling, the aqueous component still hasn't returned and my eyes are still as sore and painful as ever. There is very little reflex tearing with onion fumes, wind movement etc (although I can shed tears if I'm upset, albeit nowhere near as much as before).
Whilst the laser surgery have put forward lots of ideas for what's happened, ( inflammation, interruption of the tear cycle, bacterial infection, MGD) they seem to be at a loss to explain what's happened and how to deal with it.
I'd put a lot of hope in a referral to Moorfields Eye Hospital, and I visited them earlier today (although it was to their laser surgery unit, presumably because they would have the expertise in this sort of problem). Needless to say it was a complete letdown. After they insisted I send them my medical records so that the Consultant could examine them prior to seeing me, it became obvious that they hadn't looked at them at all, so we went through the same old cycle of have you tried this and that drop etc.
After examine my eyes, it turns out that TBUT on my left eye is now about one second, whilst on the right it is about 8 seconds. They have no real explanation for what's going on either, other than it's an extreme reaction (but I'd kind of figured that one out for myself).
I've had bandage lenses put in both eyes to see if that will help, and I'm going to see them again in two weeks (he said that this may help to evaluate if recurrent corneal erosions are part of the problem). He then went on to say that the only way forward might be to strip the surface of both eyes again and "polish" the cells with a laser to see if that will help a new epithelium adhere to the underlying cells (a snip at £2,400 per eye).
I've just about reached the end of my tether and I've given up hope of ever being normal again. I'd put a lot of faith in today's visit but I left feeling completely dejected. I'm not sure that I can go through the surgery again, and I felt that I was being railroaded into another procedure.
Thoroughly fed up. Six months ago life was great. Now I feel like this is going to finish me off permanently. And the thing is this- the thought of that no longer scares me.
To cut a long story short, I seem to have an aqueous deficiency in both eyes, although my left eye is by far the most painful. I was also diagnosed with MGD a few weeks ago and was put on steroids drops and eyelid cream with 100mg of doxycycline daily to try and sort that out. Whilst that seems to be settling, the aqueous component still hasn't returned and my eyes are still as sore and painful as ever. There is very little reflex tearing with onion fumes, wind movement etc (although I can shed tears if I'm upset, albeit nowhere near as much as before).
Whilst the laser surgery have put forward lots of ideas for what's happened, ( inflammation, interruption of the tear cycle, bacterial infection, MGD) they seem to be at a loss to explain what's happened and how to deal with it.
I'd put a lot of hope in a referral to Moorfields Eye Hospital, and I visited them earlier today (although it was to their laser surgery unit, presumably because they would have the expertise in this sort of problem). Needless to say it was a complete letdown. After they insisted I send them my medical records so that the Consultant could examine them prior to seeing me, it became obvious that they hadn't looked at them at all, so we went through the same old cycle of have you tried this and that drop etc.
After examine my eyes, it turns out that TBUT on my left eye is now about one second, whilst on the right it is about 8 seconds. They have no real explanation for what's going on either, other than it's an extreme reaction (but I'd kind of figured that one out for myself).
I've had bandage lenses put in both eyes to see if that will help, and I'm going to see them again in two weeks (he said that this may help to evaluate if recurrent corneal erosions are part of the problem). He then went on to say that the only way forward might be to strip the surface of both eyes again and "polish" the cells with a laser to see if that will help a new epithelium adhere to the underlying cells (a snip at £2,400 per eye).
I've just about reached the end of my tether and I've given up hope of ever being normal again. I'd put a lot of faith in today's visit but I left feeling completely dejected. I'm not sure that I can go through the surgery again, and I felt that I was being railroaded into another procedure.
Thoroughly fed up. Six months ago life was great. Now I feel like this is going to finish me off permanently. And the thing is this- the thought of that no longer scares me.
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