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So i've been reading this forum for a while now and never put my story up here...so here goes.
Im 25, and currently live in Syracuse NY, originally from Omaha, NE. I've had "bad" DES for about a year now. My eyes have never been great that I remember and have gone downhill for probably the last 5 years. The "bad" part started when I went to another optometrist to try as many different contacts as I could to find something that would give me some comfort while wearing them. After dealiing with a lot of crappy diagnoses which I think were all part of an insurance scam (having to deal with kerataconus, another story), I started taking restasis. I didn't have any problems with burning that many people mention here at the time. About three weeks into restasis (2x daily) my eyes became terribly dry over the course of a couple days. I called the eye doc who said to stop taking them and come in. He said I had an allergic reaction or something (allergic conjunctivitis or something) and I ended up taking like four different steroid drops over the next few months. Nothing ever really helped though and to this day I attribute Restasis to my "bad" dry eye.
I've seen four different opthamologists locally who have all given up or pawned me off on someone else. Basically nobody in Syracuse knows anythingn about dry eye. They try and think they do...but they dont. It was only after finding this site did I visit Dr Latkany in NYC. Of course my HMO doesn't cover over there so I paid an arm and a leg but it was worth it. I have a lot more confidence in him and I sure learned a lot about my visit. I can't say that he miraculously fixed me or anything but I just learned so much about what causes dry eye and the smaller things you can do to cope with it.
I've had plugs numerous times locally and never really helped, they always fell out or drove me nuts. I finally have lower plugs in now that I've gotten used to and they do help some with wetness that I can feel. I had four plugs in before and my eyes were so wet it was crazy. One only lasted a night before falling out though. It doesn't really help my DES all that much though, my eyes still feel like crap.
Oh ya, I take propecia for hair loss. I still have a full head of hair but I think its thinned some and I have numerous cousins and family that are in their twenties/thirties and are totally bald. I've taken the drug for like 6 years now. I looked at side effects long ago but never could find any corellation between DES and propecia. Then a couple weeks ago I was digging around some more and finally found a study showing finasteride (the active ingredient in the drug) having effects on meibomian gland functionality. Now I don't believe any study in the world so Im pretty skeptical at this point but I suppose it could be the root cause of my DES at some point. I've come across a couple people in various online material that have DES and were taking propecia. Maybe finasteride and the Restasis created a bad thing. There was a post on here a couple weeks ago about the same thing as well. It was funny that i found the study only a few days prior to reading the post on here about finasteride.
Ok thats all for now. If anyone cares to hear more about any particulars in my struggle, feel free to ask.
Daren
Im 25, and currently live in Syracuse NY, originally from Omaha, NE. I've had "bad" DES for about a year now. My eyes have never been great that I remember and have gone downhill for probably the last 5 years. The "bad" part started when I went to another optometrist to try as many different contacts as I could to find something that would give me some comfort while wearing them. After dealiing with a lot of crappy diagnoses which I think were all part of an insurance scam (having to deal with kerataconus, another story), I started taking restasis. I didn't have any problems with burning that many people mention here at the time. About three weeks into restasis (2x daily) my eyes became terribly dry over the course of a couple days. I called the eye doc who said to stop taking them and come in. He said I had an allergic reaction or something (allergic conjunctivitis or something) and I ended up taking like four different steroid drops over the next few months. Nothing ever really helped though and to this day I attribute Restasis to my "bad" dry eye.
I've seen four different opthamologists locally who have all given up or pawned me off on someone else. Basically nobody in Syracuse knows anythingn about dry eye. They try and think they do...but they dont. It was only after finding this site did I visit Dr Latkany in NYC. Of course my HMO doesn't cover over there so I paid an arm and a leg but it was worth it. I have a lot more confidence in him and I sure learned a lot about my visit. I can't say that he miraculously fixed me or anything but I just learned so much about what causes dry eye and the smaller things you can do to cope with it.
I've had plugs numerous times locally and never really helped, they always fell out or drove me nuts. I finally have lower plugs in now that I've gotten used to and they do help some with wetness that I can feel. I had four plugs in before and my eyes were so wet it was crazy. One only lasted a night before falling out though. It doesn't really help my DES all that much though, my eyes still feel like crap.
Oh ya, I take propecia for hair loss. I still have a full head of hair but I think its thinned some and I have numerous cousins and family that are in their twenties/thirties and are totally bald. I've taken the drug for like 6 years now. I looked at side effects long ago but never could find any corellation between DES and propecia. Then a couple weeks ago I was digging around some more and finally found a study showing finasteride (the active ingredient in the drug) having effects on meibomian gland functionality. Now I don't believe any study in the world so Im pretty skeptical at this point but I suppose it could be the root cause of my DES at some point. I've come across a couple people in various online material that have DES and were taking propecia. Maybe finasteride and the Restasis created a bad thing. There was a post on here a couple weeks ago about the same thing as well. It was funny that i found the study only a few days prior to reading the post on here about finasteride.
Ok thats all for now. If anyone cares to hear more about any particulars in my struggle, feel free to ask.
Daren
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