Last week was a wake-up call to the fact that I am ageing and can expect to face the inevitable deterioration that entails - in my case, poorer vision due to glaucoma.
I had returned home after work with a bit of what I thought was a headache and went to bed. When I work up the next day, it was still there, an ache behind the eyes. I remembered a couple of times when various people - opticians, doctors had alerted me to raised pressure within the eyes.
My panel doctor at the office referred me to an ophtalmologist and a couple of days later I went to see him, thinking to myself that it would be a wasted trip as the headache had gone and there would be no evidence of whatever the problem was for him to see.
The doctor's assistant gave me some eye drops to make my pupils widen and then made me peer into a device with tiny moving constellation of lights, which looked really pretty. Later I learnt that it performed an optical coherence tomography (OCT) scan. By the time I saw the doctor, he had a print out from the machine - a contour map of the inside of my eye, showing the optic nerve and the thickness of the nerve fibres covering the retina. He said the scan showed there was a thinning of certain parts of the layer. I had told him that my mother had lost vision in one eye due to glaucoma and that my sister's doctor had warned her about raised pressure in her eyes as well. He said that made it more likely that I too might be suffering from glaucoma as well. He then used a device with a beam of light to look into my eye and inspect the retina. My eye had become so sensitive because of the eye drops that I felt the light was unbearably intense. He also did a tonometry test to measure the pressure inside my eye but the readings turned out to be within the normal range.
I went back again a couple of days later for another tonometry test and a perimetry test, which maps out my visual field. For this, I had to peer into a device with a globe shaped screen and press a button each time I saw a spark of light. The sparks - up to 300 0f them - occurred in a random fashion all over the globe and at varying intensities. The machine beeped each time a spark appeared and I was aware there were many times that I heard the beep but saw no spark.
When I saw the doctor, he had a print out of my field of vision for each eye, with an X showing the sparks that I had failed to detect - the dead areas in my vision. He drew a circle around the Xs - they formed an oval cluster, one each on the upper part of my field of vision.
At this point, I still had doubts as to the accuracy of the test. Could I not have missed out some of the sparks due to tiredness? He said the clincher was that the clusters corresponded to the thinned out areas of the OCT scan I had done on my previous trip - a clear confirmation that the clusters did show dead areas of my field of vision.
He said it was still the early stages of glaucoma and though the dead areas could not be revived, further damage could be prevented through treatment. He said he believed I had a genetic propensity to the build up of pressure within the eye.
He has prescribed some eye drops to help lower the pressure inside the eyes. The eye produces a fluid (aqueous humor) that washes the lens and other parts inside the eye and then drains out into a system of veins and into the blood stream. The fluid is produced throughout the day so much so that there are up to 10 changes of fluid in a day! Sometimes, the drainage gets blocked and this leads to an increase in the pressure, which hurts and gradually kills some of the optic nerves. What the eye drops do is to lessen the production of the fluid and help clear the blocked drainage.
Although I am glad to have found out that I have this problem while it is in the early stages, I am very dissatisfied with the treatment, which deals with the symptoms of the disease and not the cause.
The eye drops have to be taken twice a day for the rest of my life. They sting and I can feel my eyes getting stressed. And I wonder what a lifetime of drug taking would do to the other systems like the kidneys!
In addition, I have a question: by reducing the production of the fluid, are we not upsetting the eye's self-cleaning system? And then there is the uncertainty about whether the elevated pressure is the real cause of the dead nerves. Apparently, there are people who have elevated pressure in the eyes but their optic nerves are fine. The death of optic nerves can also be caused because of poor blood supply. And since I have a bit of anaemia and low blood pressure, I wonder whether that could be the real cause.
All of this puts me in a real dilemma. For the moment, I have decided not to use the eye drops and try alternative treaments instead. I am seeing a TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) doctor who has given me some pills and a syrup which he says will improve blood circulation. Although he has asked me to continue taking the drops, I don't think I will. Apparently, the body gets used to the drops and you have to take higher and higher doses. Since this is to be a life-time regime, I really don't want to get into it.
What is clear to me from all of this is how Western medicine has become so dominant that the legitimacy of all 0ther systems is questioned. So with this ailment, I am going to try my luck with non-Western medicine.
He has prescribed some eye drops to help lower the pressure inside the eyes. The eye produces a fluid (aqueous humor) that washes the lens and other parts inside the eye and then drains out into a system of veins and into the blood stream. The fluid is produced throughout the day so much so that there are up to 10 changes of fluid in a day! Sometimes, the drainage gets blocked and this leads to an increase in the pressure, which hurts and gradually kills some of the optic nerves. What the eye drops do is to lessen the production of the fluid and help clear the blocked drainage.
Although I am glad to have found out that I have this problem while it is in the early stages, I am very dissatisfied with the treatment, which deals with the symptoms of the disease and not the cause.
The eye drops have to be taken twice a day for the rest of my life. They sting and I can feel my eyes getting stressed. And I wonder what a lifetime of drug taking would do to the other systems like the kidneys!
In addition, I have a question: by reducing the production of the fluid, are we not upsetting the eye's self-cleaning system? And then there is the uncertainty about whether the elevated pressure is the real cause of the dead nerves. Apparently, there are people who have elevated pressure in the eyes but their optic nerves are fine. The death of optic nerves can also be caused because of poor blood supply. And since I have a bit of anaemia and low blood pressure, I wonder whether that could be the real cause.
All of this puts me in a real dilemma. For the moment, I have decided not to use the eye drops and try alternative treaments instead. I am seeing a TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) doctor who has given me some pills and a syrup which he says will improve blood circulation. Although he has asked me to continue taking the drops, I don't think I will. Apparently, the body gets used to the drops and you have to take higher and higher doses. Since this is to be a life-time regime, I really don't want to get into it.
What is clear to me from all of this is how Western medicine has become so dominant that the legitimacy of all 0ther systems is questioned. So with this ailment, I am going to try my luck with non-Western medicine.
