Dry eyes at night

[favoritemamaw]

I just found this forum and I'm so glad I did! I don't know if you're still having problems, but I'd love to get an update from you to see if anything is helping you. I have the same problem!! The only difference is that it only affects my left eye. I have been having problems with it since last August (10 months ago). If I'm not careful about opening my eyes very slowly when I wake up, either in the morning or in the middle of the night for some reason, it feels as though my eyelid is stuck to my eyeball. The pain is INTENSE and then it's as if a floodgate has opened and my eye starts watering, watering, watering! It feels as though there is something gritty in it, but there isn't anything. It hurts to keep my eye open and it hurts to close it. It's just absolute torture. The only thing that seemed to help in the beginning was to put a cold compress on my eye. The first time or two it happened I thought it was just a fluke-type thing, but after it started happening fairly regularly, I went to my optometrist. He couldn't see anything wrong with my eye and suggested that I use lubricating drops...they didn't help at all! I put up with it for a couple more months and went to my primary care doctor because it was happening almost every morning. Usually the pain would go away after I kept the cold compress on for a while, but sometimes it took an hour or more. My primary thought maybe I had an eye infection, so she put me on a steroid anti-biotic drop. That seemed to help for a while and I was so relieved...but then it came back shortly after I quite using the drop. I went back to her and she tested me for autoimmune disorders...nothing. I finally went to see an ophthalmologist. He determined that it was blepharitis. He gave me another antibiotic ointment and said to wash my eyelids with baby shampoo every night to wash away any loose skin cells. Still didn't help. He didn't seem to understand what I was trying to tell him...it feels like my eyelid is sticking to my eyeball!!! Anyway, I used the ointment and the baby shampoo for a few weeks and still had problems, although not as frequently. Then one morning the pain didn't go away and seemed to get worse. Light was excruciating. I called the ophthalmologist and he was able to get me right in. Turns out I had two corneal tears. I told him again what it felt like and FINALLY he said, "Oh, well your eye is drying out and your eyelid is sticking to your eyeball." Duh!!!!! Anyway, he advised me to use Lacrilube, by Refresh every night at bedtime and Systane as needed during the day. I've been doing that faithfully for about a month now. It's somewhat better, but not completely. I've had problems the last two mornings. This morning I ended up putting more of the Lacrilube in and holding my eye closed with my fingers for several minutes. That seemed to do the trick....this time. I'm definitely going to do some research on the Tranquileyes that someone mentioned. I'm to the point where I'll try just about anything.

MODERATOR NOTE: This post was in reply to a post at this thread. I have moved your post out of the archives folder. The member to whom you were responding has not been here since Dec. 2007 so this will allow others to see and respond.

[spmcc]

RE: confused by pain in the A.M. versus pain in the P.M.

I am writing this here, as a reply to your post, because I also have eye pain (both eyes) in the morning.

I would like to know why it is that some people have eye pain in the morning while others have great mornings but get dry/painful eyes in the afternoon/evening? What is the difference and what are the mechanisms at work?

Thanks for any clarification on this!

[favoritemamaw]

Dry eye question

I'd love to know the mechanics of this problem, too. I'd also like to know how it can happen to only one eye and not the other. In my case, my right eye has no pain; my left eye is the one that has the trouble. I have no problem with dry eyes during the day. The opthamologist did the dry eye test with the little slips of tissue paper, but I did fine with that...no problem at all. So I guess my eye only dries out at night. Is that sort of thing common?

[liz56]

Hello, Favoritemamaw.

This part of your post looks familiar to me, as I suffer from Recurrent Corneal Erosions, myself:

"If I'm not careful about opening my eyes very slowly when I wake up, either in the morning or in the middle of the night for some reason, it feels as though my eyelid is stuck to my eyeball. The pain is INTENSE and then it's as if a floodgate has opened and my eye starts watering, watering, watering! It feels as though there is something gritty in it, but there isn't anything. It hurts to keep my eye open and it hurts to close it. It's just absolute torture. The only thing that seemed to help in the beginning was to put a cold compress on my eye."

That sounds a lot like what I went through, but every case is different. My RCEs are due to my having a corneal dystrophy, so everything that is true for me may not be true for you.

Also, I am not a medical doctor.

Below are some symptoms:

o Early morning awakening with painful eye
o Foreign body sensation
o Tearing
o Decreased vision
o Photophobia

Have you ever had an injury in the eye that suffers from the pain?

This can be a tricky condition, because it is hard for doctors to diagnose. The cornea heals so quickly(at least superficially) that by the time you make it to see your doctor, it looks "fine" to him or her. Mine had to ulcerate before I had a clue about what was happening.

Here are some things to ask your doctor:

Do you see any corneal staining? (If they can, then it could be severe dryness or an erosion.)
Do you see any "milky" spots on my cornea? (If so, you may have epithelial basement membrane dystrophy, which also goes by other names.)

I hope that this is not the case for you, but it if is, please know that there are things you can do to help yourself!

Best wishes,
Liz

[favoritemamaw]

Thank you for the advice, Liz. I'll check with my ophthalmologist. When I was there the last two times he used a dye to check out my eyes, which is probably how he saw the two corneal tears.

As far as I know, I've never had a past eye injury, but I suppose I could have and not realized it??

[Rebecca Petris]

As far as I know, I've never had a past eye injury, but I suppose I could have and not realized it??

It's possible, but RCE happens without injury too - usually from ABMD (the dystrophy Liz mentioned). This frequently goes undiagnosed (even by specialists), because it's more based on history than clinical findings during your exam. Is your ophthalmologist a corneal specialist?

[favoritemamaw]

Hi Rebecca. I'm not sure if the ophthalmologist I've seen is a corneal expert. I looked up his information online after reading your post and this is what is listed for him on the eye center web page: "board certified eye surgeon specializing in cataract surgery, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, eye muscle surgery for children and adults and general ophthalmology." Does any of that indicate that?

I am planning to call his office tomorrow and ask him to call me so I can see what he thinks of Tranquileyes and see if he thinks it might help. I've read some really good reviews on the product. I'm also going to see if he might be able to visit with me a little about the Recurrent Corneal Erosions mentioned above and see if he thinks that might be something to look into...maybe there is a different treatment than just using the drops, ointment at night, and the baby shampoo.

I have to got to find some relief, though, because it's to the point where I'm half afraid to go to sleep at night for fear my eyelid is going to be stuck when I wake up. When that happens it honestly feels like it rips my eyeball when I open my eye. Ugh....

I do have most of the symptoms that are listed in the posting above for the erosions, but I don't normally have any sensitivity to light...except for the time when I had the two tears. I suppose I wouldn't have to have all of the symptoms, though.

I'm just so thankful to have found this forum. I feel like I've got a lot more information now and am a little more prepared for my call to the doctor.

Thank you so much!

[liz56]

Hi, again, Favoritemamaw.

My experience affected my sleep a lot. (Some of these links I am posting are to a blog I have kept that chronicles my experience of coming to understand that I have RCEs as a result of epithelial basement membrane dystrophy and things that happened to me and things that worked to make the problem manageable.)

If you did not have an injury, the cause may be eyelid closure problems. The last visit I made to my corneal specialist I was talking to his assistant, who said two little twins of about age four had a problem where their eyelids did not fully close at night (lagophthalmos), and after my doctor put them on TranquilEyes goggles, they stopped having RCEs. So, the cause is something you will have to get to the bottom of with your doctor.

From the description you posted, it sounds like your doctor is a retina specialist. For what it's worth, the doctor who finally diagnosed me with RCEs was a retina specialist, but it still took me to visit my second corneal specialist before I knew I had EBMD (aka anterior basement membrane dystrophy, Cogan's dystrophy, and map-dot-fingerprint dystrophy).

I wish you well as you search for relief. It's important to keep trying doctors, because the condition is not easy for even trained corneal specialists to see.

Take care,
Liz

[favoritemamaw]

I'm so glad you have been able to find relief! It's definitely an encouragement. I will not give up either, because there has to be something out there that will help me. I live in a rather small city, so I may try to find a corneal specialist in the larger city to the south of us if I continue to have problems. It will be a year in August since I started having trouble. I hope and pray that I don't have to go through another year of this.