Stopped a drug, and eyes improved!

[bostoneye]

Finally something helped! Over the past few months I've had a terrible worsening of my MGD evaporative dry eye and getting desperate. Made an appointment to have re-probing next week. I was going over the list of the many meds I take for other things and, partly on a hunch, partly because of a couple of things I read on the web, decided to stop taking one of them. It's modafinil, or Provigil, which I've taken for years to help a daytime sleepiness problem caused by bad sleep. I've been off it for five days and already my eyes are at least 30 or 40 percent better than they've been! I'm still doing all the anti-inflammatory meds, compresses, blinking, etc, but it's such a huge relief to have this much improvement. I hope I'll be able to use the Provigil at times and in small doses. Will cancel the probing for now.

This is such a wake-up call to check what meds might be worsening your dry eye - even meds that haven't been implicated in the past.
Something to be thankful for today!

[grant555]

have you been checked for sleep apnea as a cause of your sleepiness? Dr. Tseng in Miami believes there's a correlation between sleep apnea and eye inflammation and there's a couple people on here who have improved by using cpap.

[ktennies]

have you been checked for sleep apnea as a cause of your sleepiness? Dr. Tseng in Miami believes there's a correlation between sleep apnea and eye inflammation and there's a couple people on here who have improved by using cpap.

I just now wrote my first post on this forum and coincidentally I have an upcoming appointment with my PCP to get a referral for a sleep study because I am almost certain I have sleep apnea. I'm surprised I've never heard this before. Time to do some more digging. Thanks!