Hello to everyone, I am LJM

[LJM]

Hello everyone. I have just found this site in the last 24 hours. I have been having eye symptoms for a year, maybe two years, but did not know they were serious. I am being treated for hashimoto's disease and have had a number of problems, including mental illness and anemia that the doctors were treating. About 4 or 5 months ago I started noticing that a small pinpoint of light would appear as a dark flourescent looking circle that was many times its normal size. I would look at the stars in the sky and they would all be large cirlces, not tiny dots. I found this to be my right eye. I noticed peoples faces would distort and I was seeing double images, circles would look like crescents and things like that. I went to an opthamologist and tried to describe it, she thought it was astigmatism. She did not ask me if my eyes were dry. I did not connect the two things. She prescribed stronger glasses as it was affecting my driving. Within 2 months my left eye was seeing starbursts. When both eyes are open now I see cirles with the star burst points coming out of them. My eyes are dry in the mornings and sometimes I can not open them for a few minutes no matter how hard I try. They eventually do open, and we get on with life, but the problem seems to be increasing. I recently saw my GP to tell her about all the joint pain I am having, and still I did not mention the eyes. She just did bloodwork looking for RA, menopause etc (the other thing I have been going through.. having no period for months and then suddenly bleeding so much that I was hospitalized and needed a transfusion with 2 units of blood). I guess with so much going on it is hard to get it all straight. I will see her in 3 weeks (she is away). My husband thinks I should get over the counter eye drops, but I am not sure which ones or whether I should. I would love to hear opinions on this and am glad to have found a forum and possibly an answer to my visual problems. My mother had hashimoto's and I do seem to recall that she had to use eyedrops, but am not sure which ones. Thank you for your time and attention. LJM

[Lacrima]

Hi LJM,

Are you using any eyedrops at all? Since it might take a couple of weeks until you decide whether to make/organise appointments, and get any prescription based drops or medicine, it's important to take care of your eyes in the meantime. And the best way to do this without irritating or drying your eyes unnecessarily is to use only preservative free drops. I wish I had known this in the beginning!

These can be bought over the counter, and almost always come in single-vial plastic containers of about 20-30. You can get these in different consistencies. For daytime, a watery one is great, and for nighttime a thicker, gel-like one, which might help with your waking up feeling sticky.


I also have anemia, but have been told this does not affect my eyes. How do you treat your anemia? I'm taking 200mg iron daily, and folic acid, with some breaks throughout the year to control my levels..

Similar to you- Over a 3 month period last year, I found myself returning to my optometrists because I couldn't see very clearly, and they kept increasing my prescription at every visit, and thought it was astigmatism or underlying muscle issues. Later I discovered that lack of tears plays a great role in not seeing sharply.

Hope you find a good opthalmologist who is experienced with Hashimoto's related dry eye. Good luck and take care.

[farmgirl]

HI LJM: I find it hard fathom that your eyes are so dry that you can't open them in the morning and your opthomologist didn't pick up on that. First of all I would seek another opinion from another opthomologist with all the weird things you are experiencing. Secondly I would be telling ALL of my medical personal about the dry eyes and thirdly I would get some drops in those eyes ASAP. If you can't open in the morning keep drops by your bed and gently retract the lid and put drops in to get them lubricated (2 if necessary). I have Sjogrens and need to put drops in every time I wake up in the night to be able to open them comfortably in the morning. As you may gather from this formum dry eyes can be a very serious problem if not treated. I wish you well.

[LJM]

To Lacrima, thank you for the welcome, I kept coming back in to see if anyone had any suggestions and was so happy to get 2 replies! My doctor just happened to be going on holidays for several weeks when this whole matter sort of came together for me. I thought that my eyes were dry because of the medication that the doctors had me on so I did not know that what was happening was important and did not put the two together. One night after I had discontinued the medication for a couple of months, I woke up and could not get my eyes open for a while, so when I did it seemed to just come to me that the things I was seeing might be related. Since the opthamologist had not asked me about my eyes and I did not know about dry eye I did not think it was important since she seemed to be sure that it was astigmatism as I said and that my old eye prescription was not good for me. When I got up and went to the internet I found that someone on this site was seeing the circles and starbursts and had dry eye (and she later found another problem that was more serious I believe), then I decided to write on the boards and ask. I just went to the pharmacy and got "optive" drops. I am in Australia so I am not sure if it is a product where you are, but because Lacrima said to ask for drops with no preservatives I did that and so I just started them. Thank you so much for the advice. Also, to farmgirl, I am waiting for test results now for RA which I doubt I have, but, I wondered about sjogrens too. I will let you know my test results when I get them. Thank you Farmgirl for the advice and I am surprised that no one asked me about whether my eyes were dry too, but I think that it was my other symptoms, seeing things that everyone was sort of caught up in. I never new about the dry eye thing until now.

[farmgirl]

Yeah, it's always live and learn isn't it. I have so often found that you need to be your own sleuth because no one knows your own body better than you. I too am happy to have found this forum because there is a LOT of good information on it, and, although comforting to know you are not suffering alone it is also a bit disconcerting to find out how many people are out there suffering with severe dry eyes...yikes!!