What happened when I tried to kill myself

[Lucy]

I second any guidance that leads you to mental health professionals able and willing to provide effective help. At the same time, though, I would caution against any approach that is SO mind/body-oriented that it essentially negates your ocular suffering by positing that if only you were healthier mentally, your eye pain would not bother you so much. . .

Oh, Teri, my heart goes out to you. The responses have been abundant and most of us can at least feel a small amount of what you must be feeling in response to your atrocious treatment. I have had several surgies since my Lasik and I fight tooth and nail to take my little hand-held purse in OR with me. Your situation was much more difficult.

Rojzen has some good points about things that negate your optical problems which are the problem. Your problem started (and caused by Lasik surgery), let's not sweep that under the rug, or attempt to minimize it. I know it was the medicals who did this.

Teri, it's too soon to think of much besides getting over your nightmare of the hospitalization. Later, this might make a good article for a women's magazine. Dry eyes has been getting more exposure lately. Your story is unique. My best to you, along with the whole crew writing you good wishes in DET. I do like Rojzen's idea that no matter what you use to make your way out of the nightmare, it was caused by...........and can happen to others, and has. Lucy

[Silverlady]

Relate to you

Teri,
I am so sorry for the way you suffered. Having spent time myself in an emergency hospitalization and not being prepared for it, I can relate to a small extent. My eyes were trivalized. They were not even prepared to administer the prescribed drops my husband went home to get. Instead I was told to put them in my bedside table and do it myself. Hello! I was being given strong pain medications and don't even remember the conversations with doctors. And if my eyes aren't hurting, I'm sure not putting in the drops I need.

Dry eyes seem so trivial to someone who doesn't suffer with them. And unless you have a doctor who is prepared to come to the hospital and write orders for it, you can be sure no one will do anything about them.

This is a wakeup call for everyone to put your eye doctor's name(s) on your medical info.

I hope you are able to get some help and your eyes improve rapidly.
Best wishes, prayers and hugs.
Billye

[Teri]

Still here and feeling better

Thank you so much for your support.

It was a relief to just write that post, a relief to press "submit" and a relief to read the replies and PMs everyone has sent to me. You all had such good advice and kind words. Oh, and this morning, I ordered the book that Dr. W recommended.

The reason I requested a copy of my medical records is because I'm trying to set up a psych consult at Johns Hopkins. I had no idea how upsetting reading them was going to be.

The whole story is worse than what I posted (more egregious statements in the medical records by the nurses and doctors). I can hardly believe what happened, but your stories show that it's depressingly common. I guess I shouldn't be surprised given how I was treated by eye doctors last year. (One eye doctor told me, when I said I felt I wasn't being taken seriously, "Honestly, your eyes just don't look like they should be that painful.")

Is there a section here for our medical horror stories? (Eight hours on grand rounds and they tell you to see a psychologist??)

I have been seeing a psychologist since last fall (he's very warm and compassionate and he is helping me), and he, my husband, and my psychiatrist all knew I was having suicidal thoughts. I didn't tell them how serious these thoughts were; I was afraid they'd hospitalize me. I was on Wellbutrin and going to therapy and I thought I was doing everything I could do, but nothing seemed to be working. I was filled with such despair....

I'm not very good at asking for or accepting help from other people, but I am so glad I asked for your help. I think I could write a really good post on why what I did was a really bad idea and why no one else should ever do it.

The thing is, my eyes have been improving. They are so much better than they were six months ago. It's like I held it together by a shoestring for months and months through the worst of it, and when it looked like I reached a livable state with regards to my eye pain, I lost it.

I had a rather thrilling thing happen a couple of weeks ago, and it's happened repeatedly since then. I was eating some really hot salsa and got a piece of jalapeno stuck in my throat. I was all choking and coughing, and MY EYES WATERED! This hadn't happened since my surgery, and I was so thrilled and excited. On my good days, I think that I'm still healing, and, on my bad days, I think it's really pathetic to get that excited over something so small.

I've had a good couple of days, but when I have another bad day (and I will, I'm sure), I may take some of you up on your offers to PM. Thanks again for your support. There are some really special, giving people here.

Teri

[Teri]

Two more things

1. I know what Rojzen means by anguish. I have thought the same thing. I decided it was grieving, for something you've lost and will likely never regain.

I've dealt with chronic pain before, as well as chronic sports injuries, but nothing laid me out like this eye pain. It effects every aspect of my life, and I don't know if I'm supposed to be going through the grieving process and accepting that I've lost some things forever or if I'm supposed to be fighting and believing I will get better and get all of those things back.

2. As Lucy, Silverlady and others noted, this is apparantly a problem not limited to psychiatric units or my particular hospital. Apparently, contrary to what one might assume, hospitals don't consider eye drops to be "medicine" in the same way oral medications are. You can believe that if you had to have surgery and were on any prescription oral medication, they'd make sure you got it. But maybe they think eye drops are on par with, say, brushing and flossing your teeth?

Any nurses or MD's out there who can verify or explain this? What is the procedure we should be using for dealing with this?

Teri

[Rebecca Petris]

...I don't know if I'm supposed to be going through the grieving process and accepting that I've lost some things forever or if I'm supposed to be fighting and believing I will get better and get all of those things back.

Teri,

You have touched on a profound, profound dilemma, one that in past years I've struggled with for long periods in other life challenges I've faced.

It's no coincidence that the most frequent question from 'new' lasik/prk patients is "Is there anyone here who experienced improvement after [3 months/6 months/9 months/2 years/etc]?" It's not just a question of desperately hanging onto hope of improvement. Often it's that feeling of being in limbo and filled with uncertainty about where to go from here that is so intolerable.

Personally, in my LASIK history, my first of two or three run-ins with that dilemma was resolved via an unexpected shortcut. Approximately three months post-op, I saw a specialist in New York as a second opinion about what I had been told was wrong with my vision. (This was back in 2001.) He scoffed at my surgeon's diagnosis and he basically told me, "Look, you're screwed. It's possible future technology might eventually be able to improve you someday, but don't hold your breath. In the meantime, the only thing likely to help you IF you're lucky is some gas perms but you should expect that to be anything but a walk in the park." I left his office shaking and white as a sheet, because until that moment I had literally never once seriously suspected I had any serious long-term untreatable complications.

While I wouldn't wish that on anyone else, for me, the abruptness of that revelation turned out to be the right thing - and in retrospect it's truly remarkable that I found a doctor who was both able and willing to tell me the facts, especially way back then.

At the time, I was in a place of real turmoil, just about to move overseas, with a ton of things going on in my personal and professional life. And so I sat myself down and basically said, "I know that I can't deal with the implications of this right now, so I'm going to consciously set aside the long-term picture and instead focus on the next 12 to 18 months. I'm going to get out there and get the best crutches I can to help me limp through that period, and THEN I'll start thinking more about what comes next." I can't say I stuck to that 100% by any means but putting that kind of mental framework on it helped me a lot through what might have been a much more difficult time.

[rubyslippers]

About the falling apart when things get better? It is a common pattern, and one I still cannot completely explain, but I have a theory. In a 26 month period I lost my hearing 3 times due to surgical complications and the third time has left me profoundly deaf (technology allows me to hear fairly well at this point via devices and implants so I can function), my husband was diagnosed at age 49 with Parkinson's, my father died, my MIL died, my FIL married within weeks to woman we did not know (turned out to be a huge blessing though), my mother got ill and depressed, my son was hospitalized in several hospitals for a neurologic disorder that causes severe mental illness, and there were a few other things thrown in. I went through these thinks like a trouper. I am an organizer and a solver and I just went to work, hurting all the while, but completely functional. Did I add that I have a very high stress job working with mentally ill and addicted teens? Those things actually kept me going.

Then, just when there was light at the end of the tunnel that I could cope again and that things were getting better thanks to new meds and technology for my suffering family members I started waking up with awful anxiety and some depression. It made no sense because things were getting better. My own theory is that when things get better, you begin to hope, but are so terrified that the hope will be dashed that it creates a battle in your mind. I saw a counselor and that helped some, but I do believe that my current several health problems are probably all fallout from stress and even some post traumatic issues. My dry eye is just another thing to cope with on top of all of this and I count it right up there with some of those other things as to the anxiety it creates.

Anyway, my point is, I think your hitting bottom when things started to look up is more common than people realize. You begin to accept loss and then you start to hope and the 2 things fight with one another. I am not surprised that it worked this way for you.

I just wanted to share, because that aspect of my own mental health was so baffling and thought my insights might be helpful to you.

I am praying for you daily. I am praying for all of us, actually. Thank God for this board because no one has a clue what this condition is like and that adds to the stress.

[Jennie]

Yes, for me I go into survival mode when things get tough. I am able to be strong and carry on. Then when the stress subsides a bit, I let myself relax and that's when I feel the emotions. It can be overwhelming.

Teri, I've been thinking about you all weekend and hoping you are ok. Thank you for posting.

Jennie

[LasikLady]

Teri,

I am sorry for what has happened to you and I can certainly empathize. I think most of us here at times have looked at our futures with thoughts of doom and wondered if it was even worth it to continue on. You are definitely not alone in your stuggles and I'm so glad you found us!! Finding this board and these people was the biggert turning point for my healing both mentally and physically.

In regard to your question on whether you should fight or accept I say both! That has worked best for me. I accept that this has happened, that I chose a surgery that was supposed to improve my life only to make it so much harder and that my eyes will probably be something I will have to "baby" for the rest of my life. But I have hope that my improvement will continue over many years and my coping skills will also improve. And I can tell you I have improved greatly since my first year post op. I have hopes that it will continue. But if not, I will go on and continue to learn better ways to cope with my situation. In the end I have vowed that I will not let it consume my life. This is what has worked for me. I hope you will find a place of peace in your own situation and life.

Please know we understand where you are and we are all pulling for you!

[eva]

Teri

I am so sorry that your life seemed so hopeless that you wanted to end it and I am so glad you are ok.

Now please assure me that the experience you described at the psych ward was simply a nightmare and that it did not happen. You woke up in the hospital with caring doctors and nurses - right?

I make this crazy assumption that staff at psych wards who deal with people who are in crisis are professional medical people and NOT complete morons who are not only ignorant of people's fragile state of mind but completely clueless of medical conditions .

Examples:

They assumed that everyone who chooses not to take legal action against poor surgery results is someone who does not have a legal case - so the true test of surgery gone bad is if the patient takes legal action (??!) - ( I guess we could assume that if someone dies during surgery and the family doesn't sue, the patient just pretended to be dead. Same logic)

There was an assumption that your "ritual" which any opthamologist would endorse and encourage was the act of some hysterical woman who was overly concerned about a trivial issue like her eye sight - sort in the same category as breaking a nail.

Then they made the clever diagnosis that since you didn't fill out the forms wearing glasses, your eyesight was not damaged. I guess they were home with the flu and missed the lecture that dry corneas cause blurry vision and impaired vision and that wearing glasses is about as helpful as wearing a hat.

So I am anxiously awaiting to hear that you simply had a bad dream and hospitals do not employ such judgemental, insensitive, untrained and clueless medical personnel.

You have great writing skills - I hope that one day you will feel energetic enough to report these people to the Hospital Administrator or to a Mental Health Advocacy Group in your area. I shudder to think of the way people are treated in that hospital with a major mental illness who do not have the skills to figure out that they deserve better health care than provided in that hospital.

In the meantime, I wish you all the best

eva

[Lucy]

. I accept that this has happened, that I chose a surgery that was supposed to improve my life only to make it so much harder and that my eyes will probably be something I will have to "baby" for the rest of my life. But I have hope that my improvement will continue over many years and my coping skills will also improve. And I can tell you I have improved greatly since my first year post op. I have hopes that it will continue. But if not, I will go on and continue to learn better ways to cope with my situation. In the end I have vowed that I will not let it consume my life. This is what has worked for me. I hope you will find a place of peace in your own situation and life.

The words of wisdom from all who posted to Teri are wonderful! Just now, reading the newer posts, Lasiklady posted a paragraph near to my heart. Sometimes I don't want to post how long ago my Lasik was so I don't drive fear into the hearts of those newly post-op. On the other hand, only a few have years and years of trouble and often there is more involved, such as myself dealing with Sjogrens, cataract surgery and radiation. Most people are cruising along in a year, maybe two. I do like the sentence Lasiklady says ......"will probably be something I have to "baby" for the rest of my life."
This is how I'm living my life and it's pretty much a fact after almost 9 years. But, life does go on and we pretty well learn to do the best we can with our circumstances. Teri, you have taken a big step in reaching out to your docs and others to help you through this tough time. I can tell you will do very well. One step....((((((((((Teri)))))))) Lucy

[Judy]

Hi Teri,

Wow, the headline of your thread astounded me and then I started reading... You touched my heart, along with so many others in our dry eye family. I don't even know how to tell you how much your story affected me, then reading all the posts written by others affected me as well. There are so many incredible people here. We are so blessed to have this site. I'm so glad you are doing better. I do know at one point in my life, when so many things were absolutely horrid, I somehow got thru the majorly bad stuff (God must have been carrying me, but I did not know that at the time). AND THEN, boom, I got so sick and low and depressed AFTER all was better. Thank you for sharing your absolutely horrifying experience. No one understands better than those of us here how painful and life altering dry eye pain can be. Thank goodness things improve with time and treatments! You are in my heart and prayers for even more healing and comfort and peace.