Lost and anxious after 1 month post Lasik dry eyes

[nwong08]

Hello everyone,

Seeking advice and help on what to do for my situation. The whole dry eyes topic is still very new to me and I've learned a lot the past month but still very clueless on a lot of the matter. My story starts out 11/8/2017 when I had my Lasik procedure. They dry eyes wasn't too bad the first few days and then there was a drastic turn overnight. Woke up one morning with my eyes so unbelievably dry, they felt like my eyes were set on fire, I couldn't open them without putting drops in to alleviate the pain. I didn't really have redness that developed, just redness from the suction during the surgery that took a while to go away, but no vessels popping up and no blood shot eyes. That was one week post-op.

Moving along to now. I've noticed from the 3rd week till now that when I wake up, my eyes are nice and white, but in an hour time, vessels start to come up and worsen throughout the day. They don't get to the point where they are bloodshot. Its also worse in my right eye than my left. I get the stinging/burning feel and my eyes ache (not constantly), also get the feeling like I have my contact in my right eye but I know there isn't one there. I went to the surgeons office Tuesday and both him and his partner took 5 seconds to look at my eyes and said they're fine, that the dryness got better since the last time they saw me. The one doc said the redness is due to my corneas healing?!?! Which doesn't make sense to me. None of my friends who have had Lasik said this happened to them. I've come across some posts on here and some have mentioned inflammation and mgd. I haven't been properly diagnosed and def don't feel like the surgeon has properly assessed anything else aside from my cornea. His instructions are to just continue with artificial tears and warm compresses and promised it would get better in the months to come (3-6months). I don't believe him or his partner.

What I've been doing so far has been at least one compress each day (2 if I get the time), thera tears as needed (just purchased refresh Optive advance and mega3 to try), fish oil daily (720 dha/epa total daily), I drink 2 teas twice a day to help reduce inflammation (goji berry with crysanthamum and the other turmeric, lemon, ginger, honey). I just purchased occusoft scrub but don't even know if I'm doing it correctly or if I need to.

My questions are:
1. Is there something I'm missing that I should be doing?
2. Any recommendations on an optometrist/opthalmologist in the Philadelphia area that would examine me properly? My hopes are to catch what's going on early so that I can properly care for myself and maintain it. My surgeon is a corneal specialist already.
3. Has anyone else had this issue one month post Lasik?
4. I've read about autogolous serum drops, but has anyone used them 1 month post Lasik? How effective are they?
5. Any ideas why I wake up with nice white eyes and them getting red as the day goes by?

Thanks in advance. This has been extremely frustrating for me. I just got married this Summer and just starting my marriage. This has been difficult for both my husband and I. I don't know if what I'm doing is leading in the right direction. Instant regret getting Lasik after having wanting it for so many years. The doc definitely did not stress the severity of the complications both short or long term. All was said was oh possible halos, Starbursts and possible dry eyes. To make it worse for me, I have some refraction left in my right eye (-0.5) hich has made me feel nauseous from the beginning. I notice the refraction difference with both eyes open and now looking for prescription lens for glasses just for my right eye, which I'm hoping will help with the nausea.

[farmgirl]

I am so sorry to hear of all your troubles Wong. I have never had lasik but I understand that temporary dry eye is a common complication which often resolves on it's own. IN the meantime I would highly recommend serum drops as they contain stem cells and nutrients which help heal the eye and keep it healthy. Hopefully you are not one of those people for whom it becomes permanent.

Your teas sound awesome and if they don't help your eyes they will help with a whole lot of other stuff...good work.

I am not a Dr but I would think that the redness progressing through out the day is related to inflammation caused by the dry eye and at night the eye recovers somewhat.

Hopefully others ( and there are many on this forum post lasik) can speak to what ever else you could be doing. I could suggest plugs or moisture chamber glasses to help get you through this period....stay strong...cheers...F/G

[PhoenixEyes]

So sorry to hear of your suffering, hope you find something to give you relief soon. I agree that LASIK is unfortunately a cause of dry eye. Here's a link with information:

http://www.lasikcomplications.com/dryeye.htm

You doctors should definitely do more thorough investigation. For example they should at least put in staining eye drops to examine under a slit lamp, the above link has some staining pictures post-LASIK you can look at for examples. For MGD they can try to manually express the glands and see if they are functional. I guess cost may be a barrier but I'd say to maybe go to a different eye doctor than the one who did the surgery to get another opinion, but maybe I am just being cynical.

Autologous serum is definitely worth a shot if things don't seem to heal post-surgery in a reasonable amount of time. They have a lot of different factors to help with healing, including nerve growth factors which can be good for some post-LASIK who end up with neuropathic eye pain aka corneal neuralgia or "pain without stain" due to damage to the nerves during surgery. Amniotic membrane also has such factors, there is Prokera amniotic contact lens or certain amniotic fluid extract eye drops like Genesis, RegenerEyes etc. The people who make Prokera are also making amniotic and umblical cord eye drops with fragments of tissue retained which may or may not have a benefit over fluid extracts. It'll be called Regenesol and may come out next year in America.

Keep up with what you're doing and hope the new eye drops you're trying are helpful. It is unfortunately a lot of trial and error with artificial tear eye drops as we all have different sensitivities.

[nwong08]

I am so sorry to hear of all your troubles Wong. I have never had lasik but I understand that temporary dry eye is a common complication which often resolves on it's own. IN the meantime I would highly recommend serum drops as they contain stem cells and nutrients which help heal the eye and keep it healthy. Hopefully you are not one of those people for whom it becomes permanent.

Your teas sound awesome and if they don't help your eyes they will help with a whole lot of other stuff...good work.

I am not a Dr but I would think that the redness progressing through out the day is related to inflammation caused by the dry eye and at night the eye recovers somewhat.

Hopefully others ( and there are many on this forum post lasik) can speak to what ever else you could be doing. I could suggest plugs or moisture chamber glasses to help get you through this period....stay strong...cheers...F/G

Thank you farmgirl. I've set an appointment with an opthalmologist at Penn who specializes in dry eyes in hopes that she would properly assess and tell me exactly what's going on. Unfortunately my appointment is months from now as she apparently is the go to doc for dry eyes in the Philadelphia area. Hopefully she can give me a script for serum drops. From the sounds of it, I don't see how it would hurt to try it out. Do serum drops help with inflammation also? It's rather frustrating at work with it being so dry (about 25% humidity). I'm a nurse working night shift and the redness makes it look like I'm either high or extremely tired which I think scares patients.

Definitely trying to stay strong. It helps reading other posts and success stories on post Lasik patients that finally have a routine that works and them successfully maintaining their dry eyes.

[nwong08]

So sorry to hear of your suffering, hope you find something to give you relief soon. I agree that LASIK is unfortunately a cause of dry eye. Here's a link with information:

http://www.lasikcomplications.com/dryeye.htm

You doctors should definitely do more thorough investigation. For example they should at least put in staining eye drops to examine under a slit lamp, the above link has some staining pictures post-LASIK you can look at for examples. For MGD they can try to manually express the glands and see if they are functional. I guess cost may be a barrier but I'd say to maybe go to a different eye doctor than the one who did the surgery to get another opinion, but maybe I am just being cynical.

Autologous serum is definitely worth a shot if things don't seem to heal post-surgery in a reasonable amount of time. They have a lot of different factors to help with healing, including nerve growth factors which can be good for some post-LASIK who end up with neuropathic eye pain aka corneal neuralgia or "pain without stain" due to damage to the nerves during surgery. Amniotic membrane also has such factors, there is Prokera amniotic contact lens or certain amniotic fluid extract eye drops like Genesis, RegenerEyes etc. The people who make Prokera are also making amniotic and umblical cord eye drops with fragments of tissue retained which may or may not have a benefit over fluid extracts. It'll be called Regenesol and may come out next year in America.

Keep up with what you're doing and hope the new eye drops you're trying are helpful. It is unfortunately a lot of trial and error with artificial tear eye drops as we all have different sensitivities.

Thank you PheonixEyes. I actually just mentioned in my post to farmgirl, I setup an appointment with a doc at Penn for proper assessments and to b properly diagnosed if there is anything to diagnose and hopefully get a script for serum drops. The appointment unfortunately is months away. My Lasik surgeon and his partner still have yet to do one assessment on my dry eyes, which I realized after the fact that they didn't even do one before surgery, which is upsetting even though I had no problems with dry eyes prior. Im still doing the compresses and just started on the scrubs. I'll continue to do it until I have a proper diagnosis. Definitely interested in hearing more about amniotic and cord eye drops. I haven't heard or read too much on it yet. I see a lot of people write about serum drops. Still looking for artificial tears that work for me. If you have any recommendations, please do share!

[PhoenixEyes]

Best of luck at your appointment.

I'm in UK/Europe so the eye drops available here are different but I think you can get them on Amazon US. Hylo-Forte and Thealoz Duo are my main aqueous drops and for an oil-based drop I use Cationorm which is called Retaine MGD in America.

[farmgirl]

FYI nwong, if you are working in a hospital setting it might interest you to know that eyes appear particularly bloodshot and red rimmed under florescent light. It drives me crazy to go into a public washroom and look in the mirror. The first time I thought OMG I have suddenly gotten so much worse, and then I went home and they looked the same as ever, not great but not like a stoner.

[nwong08]

farmgirl red rimmed?! I've noticed that! It always makes me worried that by being at work I was torturing my eyes and putting them through so much stress. I would ask my fellow nurses if it looked red and they look at me crazy. Good to know, thank you. Outside of work, my eyes do get red but not as bad unless I'm in an environment that is dry like the hospital. The blood vessels in my scleral still come up too even when I'm in humidified air, it isn't as prominent like at work.

I'm a big worrier when it comes to my health, so when things deviate from my norm, I get extremely anxious. I never had a problem with dry eyes before, except my occasional times of falling asleep with contacts in and waking up with dry eyes. And once many years ago, my eyes got red and bought visine, used once and never had to again. The whole dry eyes chapter is brand spanking new.

[farmgirl]

Do serum drops help with inflammation also?

To answer your question, yes serum drops do help with inflammation