Getting Help

The loss of vision in my ‘good eye’ was gradual and it wasn’t untiI I was finding it harder to be at work and do simple things like the grocery shopping that I realised I should do something about it. We made an appointment to see my GP as I wanted a referral to another eye specialist. My specialist was telling me my eye was improving but everything was getting worse and I was losing sight in both eyes. Dr Rowe was stunned at my lack of sight. He asked me to stand against the door and look over at the opposite wall, and tell him what I could see. I couldn’t see anything and then realised there was actually an eye chart there. He was shocked by my lack of vision and made an emergency appointment at the Canberra Eye Hospital. After seeing one of the doctors I left with my eye padded. During the last eighteen months whenever my eye needed to be padded, I had one good eye and could still see enough to get around but this time my vision was very poor and it was very scary. During the night I woke up with a very sore eye and ended up sitting in a chair for the night because I couldn’t lie down. Mid morning I took the pad off and my eye was red and watery and I knew I was in a bit of trouble. Peter rang the Eye Hospital and made an appointment with Dr Kate Reid.

She started making plans for me. A contact lens bandage was put on my eye to protect it and help it heal. She told me about an optometrist in Civic who has contact lenses which don’t actually sit on the cornea but on the white of the eye and that helps the cornea to heal and also helps with vision and gave me the names of two specialists in Sydney who she thought would be able to help. It was a really positive appointment and Dr Kate explained that the window to my right eye was damaged. The cornea surface will heal but there was some scarring that was causing the problem with the vision. Another transplant may be able to fix it, but that was something for the surgeon to decide. She explained that the left eye’s window was OK but there was a lot of damage behind the window. It is like a cork plugging up the line of vision, and surgery will be needed to unplug it. During the last eighteen months this wasn’t explained to me and I was under the impression my left eye cornea was healing after the graft detached.

I walked out of there feeling that a load had been lifted from my shoulders and I knew I had found my new eye specialist.

I took leave from work and then started to figure out how we were going to get through this. I was in a bit of trouble and needed to make some adjustments to my life.

While all my eye dramas were happening we were making big changes in our lives. We had decided to buy the block of land in Majors Creek, build a new house and sell up in Canberra. Peter changed jobs and he was going to be travelling a fair bit, we had two teenage daughters who we were going to uproot from the city and move to a small country village and I was menopausal and nearly blind. There is never a good time for this stuff!