New to dry eye and struggling

[Lou1]

Hi, I'm a 35 year old woman and both eyes are very dry. It follows an incident in which I was cleaning paint brushes and some watered down white spirit flicked in my eye. It has not gone away and I think it may be permanent. I am struggling mentally with this and am very anxious and depressed. The artificial tears I have been prescribed hardly help a bit and I work on a computer and this kills my eyes now. Have child and mortgage, can't just curl up and wallow in self pity which is what I feel like doing. Please give me some hope.

[epicjinx]

Okay first of, what have you been told you have? (Do you know?) It might be MGD/bleph/both/water deficient/both again (oil and water lacking)/mucus lacking. Allergies might be a problem too. Do you do anything else that may help your dry eyes? I got dry eyes from computer use, been slowly getting there at nearly 2 years with it. Sorry for so many questions but it helps if you know what you have, and can start trying other things that just artifical tears that imho doesnt work at all. If you have inflammation, you NEED to get this under control, inflammation= bad. I'm not sure what else to tell you for the now, there are specific treatments aimed at whatever you have, but i have no clue since you havent been (told/properly checked by optremists/ect?) or maybe you have (no idea).

[Keely]

Hi Lou1. As someone who got the same thing - dry eyes after an accident - I can sympathise but I can't be much help as I've only been dealing with this for a few months myself. Which drops are you using? I found that the watery ones did not help, but Optive and Hylotears made a real difference. The F.Lux software can make computer use more bearable as it reduces the light output. It didn't solve the problem completely for me, but it did help.

Has your doctor made any suggestions for other treatment options? For me, the overnight gel didn't work well at all, but a bandage contact lens put in two weeks ago has improved things incredibly even if it is temporary.

[Lou1]

I have just been told there are dry patches and to use the artificial tears (hypromellose). Thanks for the drops suggestions, will try those. I have not yet had a proper dry eye assessment, this is being done shortly. Not really trying anything else as I don't know what to do. Spending a lot of time losing sleep and worrying constantly about never feeling at ease with them again. Also worrying about my future vision as I only have one eye that works really, the left eye can not even read a newspaper headline! And rerunning the incident over with the white spirit, should have washed better.

[savino]

..........

[Greg Dahlen]

Well, what helped me is two things. One is that for eight years now I've been living about 92% on fluid cow milk and cream products. So every day I drink between one and two gallons of fluid cow milk and cow cream products. That could be skim milk, whole milk, 1%, 2%, half and half. For six years that was enough. Then, about two years ago I had some general body tiredness I had trouble dealing with, so I added getting quite involved in religion. Now the combination of living 92% on milk and cream products and participating in religion has me feeling okay, including my eyes.

The National Eye Institute also has good information on their dry eye page: https://nei.nih.gov/health/dryeye/dryeye