Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

My dry eye story so far

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • My dry eye story so far

    Hi All,

    My name is Sebastian. I am living in germany and suffer from
    dry eyes. Currently I'm reading "The dry Eye remedy", which
    helps me a lot to understand the disorder. Here in germany it's really
    hard for people with dry eyes to find help. A big amount of the
    population and even a wide range of doctors doesn't recognize dry eyes
    as a serious disorder. I visited four eyedoctors and a huge hospital in
    heidelberg, which has a seperate eye clinic. I still have the disorder
    and no doctor could help. I hope my english is understandable enough.

    About me

    I'm a 22 year old college student. I'm studying computer sciences in
    Karlsruhe. You see, there is the first problem: After my study I'll sit
    in front of a computer the whole day. At the moment I don't need my
    computer really much. This will change in the forseeable future. I'm a
    healthy young man. I have a girlfriend, much friends and i love doing
    sports. But these dry eyes make me desperate. I don't think I can start
    working as a computer scientist, if I can't manage to cure my eyes.
    That's making crazy.

    When it all started

    I belivie it started in the age of 13, in the year I got my first
    computer. I don't know if it started before buying the computer, or
    after buying it. A horrible chapter in my life was just about to start.
    My eyes were really, really hurting. Much more then today.
    I squeezed my eyes the whole time. There was a reflex that forced me to
    do so. I belivie you can imagine how silly that looks and how people
    stare at you.... just horrible. Therefore I spent the most of my
    freetime at home watching televison and playing computergames. Of course, that made it only worse. I started
    accept, that I'm diffrent then the other kids. I only visited one
    doctor at this time. He didn't find out what was wrong with me. There
    were times I
    did have a lot of problems and other times I didn't even recognize there
    is something wrong with my eyes. After some years with this serious
    problem it suddenly disappeared almost completly. I didn't have problems
    for about 5-6 years. My life changed a lot and finally I was happy.

    When it returned

    In the holiday season I was working as a software developer from
    September 4th 2008, to August 8th 2008. After about 2-3 days of work my
    eyes started to hurt and the dry eye symptoms returned. I couldn't
    believe that the disorder was back and I thought that it was propably
    only temporarily. That wasn't the case. I got worse and worse each day.
    One thing was really odd: About 1 year ago I started to worke at the
    same office for about 6 months and I didn't have any problems sitting in
    front of a computer! What happend with me in these few days?
    My eyes aren't red. They are only hurting.
    It's getting much worse if I sit infront of a computer or when it's stormy.

    What I did about it

    I visited several eye doctors. One of them inserted punctum-plugs in all of my tear ducts (first the lower, then the upper ones).
    The Plug in the lower-right duct didn't fit, because the duct was to big (It was the biggest plug with 1.1mm size). The plugs didn't help
    me. I tried a lot of diffrent artificial tears (some were made from my own blood in the hospital of heidelberg, they were the only ones that helped a bit). None did really help me. The most even made it worse.
    My last doctor found out, that the break-up-time of my tearfilm is to fast (Something is wrong with my oily tear-layer). He gave me artificial tears with a oily component (There's only one tear on the market in germany with oily component, called
    Visine - Trockenes Auge Tropfen) and a salve for the night. After about one month the irritation of the eye was gone, but after a while anothere sort of burning returned. I stopped taking the tears and
    it got better again. So, I didn't harmonize with the tears. My doctor told me, that there are some people that really harmonize with artificial tears and otheres that
    don't. And I'm one person of group two. So, I don't takt any drops at this time. He gave me Ocuvite - Dry Eye Caps. They mainly consist of Omega 3's, Zinc and some Vitamines.
    The hurting has lowered a bit, but I still have serious problems. I really can't sit infront of a PC for a longer time. I really love my job but I'm realling fearing to have to cancle my study. I don't want
    to cancle college..... That's just driving me crazy.

    I tried so much things. Currently I have started to use warm compresses two times a day. I even visited a alternative practitioner with meaningfull no results. My dermatologist found out, that I react allergical on grass Poles, but I don't think that's the cause of my problem.

    Sorry for the long post and thank you for reading.

    Kind greets from germany,
    Sebatian

  • #2
    Hi Sebastian. Guten tag! Welcome to the site.

    I'm currently working as an analyst and am required to spend at least 6 hours a day at the computer. I hate it as I know it makes my eyes worse, but you have to make a living right?

    I guess the question I would ask you is this - do you have other career interests that would not require you to sit in front of the computer so much? If you're only 22 there is plenty of time to develop a different career. For example, even if you love computers, you could do IT consulting or work as an IT manager. Anything would be better than programming in a dark office for countless hours at a time. (I've worked with IT people so I know what the office environment is like) Or you could even switch majors... plenty of time.

    Also, I hope you've stopped playing video games. Video games require you to pretty much stop blinking. That's can't be good.

    Good luck!

    --Josh

    Comment

    Working...
    X