Terri's Recent Blog Post

[liz56]

Terri's blog post from May 2nd 2008 came up when I went to the blog area today, and she raises a great point about tracking our improvement.

Thanks so much for posting this, Terri, and thanks, too, to Rebecca for adding her ideas, too. It is quite helpful!

While it is really hard to keep track of daily, and, it seems, hourly fluctuations in the way that my eyes feel, I have been able to track my erosions on a spreadsheet. I keep the day in the left column, the number and size of the erosion in the next (.5 for a mild erosion, 1 for a full erosion, up to 3 for how many times I've been awakened by an erosion), how many hours that night I got of sleep in the third column, what steps I took to fend off erosions (including types of eye drops, gels, and ointments, Tranquileyes, starting synthroid, etc.) in the last column.

I'll attach a graph that I made. I'll probably make my corneal specialist think that I am nuts, but I am going to give him a copy of this (current) when I see him next month.

--Liz

PS I'm having trouble attaching an xls chart. Any suggestions? I'm a Mac user and have Firefox as a browser.

Okay, I gave up. I was able to save as a .pdf and posted under my first blog entry, which may be best, because it shows the progress from last year.

[Terri]

Liz: Thanks for your kind comments about that post. I really like the way you attached the Excel chart as a PDF. If I'm reading the chart correctly, it looks like your erosions have abated substantially in recent months.

Terri

[Rebecca Petris]

I"m sorry about the attachment problem. I've been having trouble with it for some time and haven't been able to pin down why. I'll try and get some answers from vBulletin.

Y'know, I finally decided today that replicating my blog on this site was a dumb idea, so I've stopped. The problem is, the way blog entries are displayed, my entries flood the system so I can't (and others can't) easily see other people's once I've posted a week's worth of Medline stuff.

I've really been enjoying everybody's posts in the blogs and looking forward to more.

[liz56]

Liz: Thanks for your kind comments about that post. I really like the way you attached the Excel chart as a PDF. If I'm reading the chart correctly, it looks like your erosions have abated substantially in recent months.

Terri

Yes, they have! The chart gives a bird's eye view of the progress. Those last three erosions-- two in January and one in March-- were minor. Dwelle did the trick. I don't think it was the Restasis! ;-)

I still have bad days, like yesterday, when the eyes feel terrible, but I have no idea how to chart it unless I assign the bad feelings numbers, which is pretty subjective, and, I fear, inconsistent. However, the erosions are not hard to chart. I know exactly what minute they happen.

Thanks for your posts, Terri. I've really been enjoying reading them!