Eye, Be Healed in Jesus' Name!

A little over a week ago, I woke up with some scary things in my vision.

For years, I have had a lot of lights, sparks, negative and positive afterimages, visual snow, floaters, lights while blinking and more. For many years I didn't even know the things had names, so I just made my own descriptions up. ;)

This new thing was much different than everything else I had experienced before...

I had a grey spot just above my center vision where I could not see anything. Yet at the same time, my brain was trying to fill it in with information surrounding it. I could only see the extent of the "blindness" while looking at detailed objects like the edge of trim, wall or text . I could also tell if say, looking at facebook, the header where it is blue, looked gray to me instead. Colors are not quite right in the spot unless I am just looking at a white or black background.

What I see on the Amsler Grid

Since I've had a lot of lights before, I figure it would just go away like the hundreds of other times before it. A few hours went by, a day, 3 days...Oh uh! It was not going away, so...I decided I should probably called the doctors first thing Monday. After talking to a nurse the soonest they could see me was Thursday. I thought to myself, "Well sweet! That gives me a few days to pray for this thing!" If it's healed in the meantime, then I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. haha!! My husband and I had been praying for my eye. I had been meditating about it. I had a friend pray for me too.

Well Thursday morning comes around and it is still there, so I go in. I really hate going to doctors. Every time I do, it is bound to make me upset because often times I'm treated pretty badly. But it is not just me. I am reminded my sister had a malignant brain tumor for over a year and no one took her seriously either!

We waited for almost 3 hours in the office.

The doc remembered me as having the weird eyes.

I wasn't sure if I should be happy he remembered me or not. Last time I was there, they never really came to any conclusions. I had some retinal traction or something like that and my retinas looked white, but they had no idea why I was seeing what I was seeing.

The first pass with the slit lamp exam, the eye doctor said he saw nothing except the few really big floaters in that eye. I told him I know for a fact it is not a floater and the spot was fixed. He was trying to tell me I was just seeing a floater.

He then examines my eye with me tilted back and he was directing the light in exactly the place where the blind spot was located in my vision. He took a few slow passes.

He starts off by saying he really doesn't see anything wrong. My heart just sank...I said that is great news of course but I have a blind spot. He goes on to tell me well he did see a "spot of hypopigmentation" in that area of the retina, but he did not know what it was but wasn't sure it could cause my issue. He said he had never seen this before and had no idea what it meant.

That's what I did not want to hear from this guy. That's exactly what he said 3 years ago and eventually I had a different doctor take a look at me. The different doctor was highly confused why I was being checked so often. He said everything was fine and that the retina was a bit shiny, but that it's benign (White without pressure) and told me I did not need to be seen again unless something came up.

So here we go again. Same deal. Doc has no idea what it is, yet he orders no further testing, does not refer me to go to another doc. He just told me to wait another 2 weeks...I feel like I'm reliving the same thing over again.

I have a hunch of what it might be and I tried to pass this along to the doctor, but was met with resistance from the nurse. She basically just yelled at me on the phone for a good 5 minutes. Telling me the internet is a "dangerous" place and that I was "questioning the doctor's training and experience". etc etc etc I prayed as she was yelling at me and just said, God please be with this woman who is taking her frustration out on me for something in her own life.

The good news is that the prognosis is typically good, but it varies for everyone. Bad thing is, with it being so rare (0.45 per 100,000 people), it seems like they really do not know.

For comparison- Addison's Disease is 1 per 100,000. POTS is 170 per 100,000.

At the moment, it looks like it is not something that will be permanent but only time will tell. Thank you Jesus it wasn't the first signs of MS. I was freaking out about the possibility because I have lots of MS symptoms that are quite similar to POTS. I still pray for this spot to be healed completely in Jesus' name and not progress any further.

I'm waiting on a few other health miracles right now, so I really don't want to see that list getting any longer. hahah! ;)

Some Blood Work

Here's some blood work I had done. It came back the day I went to the eye doctor, so I haven't been thinking about it much. hehe

I started on 12.5mg of DHEA yesterday on the advice of my doc. Then after 2 weeks take 1/2 tab twice daily.

Electrolyte Panel
Sodium 141 (135-145) Good
Potassium 4.0 (3.5-5.2) Pretty decent
Chloride 104 (97-108)
Carbon Dioxide 24 (20-32)

FT4 1.25 (0.61-1.76) Doc says the range should be 1.0-1.76
FT3 3.4 (2.3-4.2) Mid-range
TSH 2.095 (0.450-4.500) Little high
DHEA-S 24 (65-380) WoW!!

With these thyroid labs, my doc wants me to start on Armour in 2 weeks once I get the DHEA up to 25mg daily. He doesn't want to change 2 things at once, which makes sense.

Something weird that has come up out of no where is this strange pain near my right rib cage. It actually woke me up yesterday morning and was excruciating for about 15 seconds. Then it faded some--thankfully. It MIGHT be a pulled muscle, but I'm going to give it some time to see what happens. I have been doing some painting in the house, so it's definitely possible. heh I don't know why my muscles are so weak if that's the case.

Tonight my eye is not good. Very strange with lights near my peripheral vision, but I'm going to hang in there unless a shower of floaters come up out of no where. If that's the case I'll be calling the emergency number.

Eye Problems

Last week some time I noticed that the vision in my left eye got really bad overnight. It was really nice here so I was wearing my contacts rather than my glasses. I hate wearing the clip-on on my glasses.

Then a few days later, I noticed that my eye was not "feeling" right. It felt heavy, almost like it "needed to rest". It sounds really weird, but I felt like I needed to take my eye ball out and let it sleep for a while. I knew something wasn't right, but just shrugged it off.

Then 3 days ago I started to get a flash of light in the far peripheral vision of my eye. It wasn't all the time and I only really noticed it when it was dark out or if I was in a dark room. Needless to say that scared the shit out of me, so this whole entire holiday weekend I was anxiously waiting to call the eye doctor.

Today I finally saw the eye doctor and he kind of blew it off at first saying it was likely an optical migraine (because I'm so young). This was the first time in 15 years that the eye doctor dilated my eyes (because I'm so young). Gosh darnit, I am really sick of being young and getting treated like shit.

Anyway...When he dilated my pupils and began the exam, he said that my vitreous is "tugging" at the retina on my left eye. They use a bunch of mirrors and lights to look deep into the retinas and he said when he flashed the light in that area, it had a milky appearance which indicates tension. He said not to worry about it too much (uh-huh right), but he told me what to look out for/warning signs for a detached or torn retina. Technically I already have some of the symptoms, but he said if the lights get worse or if more floaters show up out of no where to call him immediately or get to the ER.../sigh

In addition to this, my prescription went up -0.50 in less than 6 month's time. Something is not right! That puts my left eye at -5.00. It is only -0.25 away from the right eye which has always been my "bad eye" ever since 4th grade. Consistently there was always -0.75 difference between the eyes.

Now as you can imagine, I'm totally freaked out! I've been needing to stress dose... My dad had a torn retina about 10 years ago and his vision has never been the same since. He has permanent floaters in his eye and he still to this day has flashing lights.

So I think I might go for a second opinion just to calm my nerves. Of all the things I'd never want to lose, that is my eye sight. LOL It's kind of important...just a little bit.