severe dry eye

[ramapullela]

Hi

My name is Rama. I was reading the story by Anesthesia resident who was wondering if UV Radiation was the cause.
My story is little similar. I was doing my fellowship in pediatric intensive care at UCSF about 6 years ago. As a part of my fellowship i am required to do research. I was counting neurons under microscope for long hours and that was the first time i had dry eyes. They went away and hit me hard 6 months later when i first started my job in Sacramento( very dry place). Since then i have been suffering. I have all my 4 puncta cauterized. I started restasis a year ago. In april, my dry eye seems to have gotten better, so i stopped restasis in May. They still remined resonably managebale until 3 month ago, In august they suddenly got worse, never recovered. (i did go for swimmimg, and did not wear my goggles the previous day) Do not know why. I went thru extensively all the medical leterature on this dry eye . Could not find anything that would help me
I was wondering if any of you experiencedsudden worsening like me and if any intervention helped
Rama

[nycdryeyegirl]

Hi

My name is Rama. I was reading the story by Anesthesia resident who was wondering if UV Radiation was the cause.
My story is little similar. I was doing my fellowship in pediatric intensive care at UCSF about 6 years ago. As a part of my fellowship i am required to do research. I was counting neurons under microscope for long hours and that was the first time i had dry eyes. They went away and hit me hard 6 months later when i first started my job in Sacramento( very dry place). Since then i have been suffering. I have all my 4 puncta cauterized. I started restasis a year ago. In april, my dry eye seems to have gotten better, so i stopped restasis in May. They still remined resonably managebale until 3 month ago, In august they suddenly got worse, never recovered. (i did go for swimmimg, and did not wear my goggles the previous day) Do not know why. I went thru extensively all the medical leterature on this dry eye . Could not find anything that would help me
I was wondering if any of you experiencedsudden worsening like me and if any intervention helped
Rama

Hi Rama,

Welcome! I am so relieved that someone is asking a question that has been on my mind as well for quite some time which is has anyone ever experienced a sudden worsening of their dry eye condition and if any treatment has helped them

On June 26th 2008, I had initially a mild eye pain in my right eye which after approximately twelve hours later, I developed extremely severe pain in my right eye and later on in my left eye. This pain seemed to have gotten worse when direct sunlight hit my eye causing excessive tear flow and worsening/blurring of my vision and even indoor lighting was horrible on my eyes.

After I experienced this extremely painful episode in my eyes, my eyes have been severely dry and unfortunately, so far I have not found any relief for my dry eye symptoms.

For the past twelve months, I have been under the care of a occular immunologist (I have lupus and Sjogren's) and at my first consultation with this doctor, after he had examined my eyes, he said that because of my underlying immunological diseases, i.e. lupus and sjogren's, most of my tear glands were damaged/destroyed and he suggested that I might be a candidate for the Boston Scleral lenses.

I then had a followup visit with my doctor six weeks later and he suggested I first try restasis and/or lotemax. I first tried the lotemax and at my next appointment with my doctor, he found the lotemax to be causing significant drying on my corneas (superficial punctate keratitis) as well as increased ocular pressure, so he decided to stop the lotemax treatment and then he instituted the restasis treatment for one month.

At my next appointment, one month later, the doctor said that I had much less inflammation in the cornea (superfical punctate keratitis symptoms decreased significantly) so he decided to keep me on the restasis treatment for another three months and to see if there were any more improvements with my dry eye symptoms.

Unfortunately, three months later, when I went back to see my doctor, he said that when he looked behind the tear film, my eyes looked totally dry and so he suggested I discontinued using Restasis, since it did not appear that it was helping me.

At this moment my doctor and I are considering first trying serum eye drops and if that does not help, perhaps trying the Boston Scleral lens.

Through the DEZ, I have found so many informative and helpful suggestions mentioned by the members that I strongly suggest you partake of the various sub-sections (i.e. restasis/cyclosporine, medical literature and news, etc) listed in the DEZ forum.

Pam

[Jade]

I've had dry eyes since having refractive surgery in 1992. I had 7 years of severe symptoms (dryness, pain, and torment) followed by 7 years of almost no symptoms of dry eye at all. For the past 3 years I've had severe symtoms again. Now I have some periods of time that are in general better than other periods. I have good days and then I have bad days. I have some mornings that are terrible followed by evenings that are good and then good mornings followed by bad evenings. I've tried everything I've ever heard of for dry eyes. I'll think something might be helping me at first but then my eyes are bad again. No treatment has ever made my condition go away. During my 7 years of having practically no symptoms I did nothing for my eyes and I never went to an eye doctor during that time. The only thing I've figured out is that this condition has been totally unpredictable.