who knew a little vein did so much?

Okay -- so Andy posted a tiny bit about the other day with my fun trips to the doctors... here's the more-detailed version...

Tuesday morning I woke up and found that I couldn't see very well out of my right eye. It scared me to death. I called Andy and called the doctor (family doctor) to find out if I should go to them or an eye doc or to the ER. She said it was my choice -- that if I did go there, they could refer me to an eye doc etc. so I went and got their 9am appointment with one of the other doctors in the practice (my doc isn't in on Tuesdays). The nurse did a basic eye exam on me (I couldn't see hardly anything out of that eye -- it was not only blurry but it seemed like only about 30% of the light was getting in -- if I closed my right eye and then opened it and closed the left, it was like someone took the lights in the room and turned the down low with a dimmer switch or something. So the doctor came in and said that she would call across the street to the opthamologist and get me right in. So across the street we went (originally I was thinking "wow what a waste of $15" but they had taken my BP which proved to be helpful later).

So after sitting for a few minutes in this opthamologist's office (where apparently one of the doctor's does oil painting -- and I hope he never reads this b/c I thought they weren't very good -- and Andy said it was ironic that here are all these "blurry" paintings (b/c they're oil) in an eye docs office)... they got me in and I went into a different waiting room (Andy stayed out in the main one with his laptop and at least got some work done -- poor guy). After sitting awhile there, a nice gal came and got me and did a basic eye exam on me, putting drops in my eyes that burned like crazy, then checked them, then put drops in to dilate my pupils -- then did all kinds of checks with shining lights into my eyes.

The ironic thing was that she would apologize for the brightness of the light and she would check my right eye (the bad one) and I would not even blink, then she would move the machine over to check my left eye and I would practically be jumping out of the chair because the light was blinding me. Crazy.

The opthamologist came in (friendly chap -- NOT) and had a look and immediately said something about occlusion... and then they started talking about having to take photographs of my retina and the veins -- and injecting dye so that the veins show up better in the pictures (and meanwhile I'm thinking "just WHERE are you gonna be doing this INJECTING???" -- turns out its your arm heh heh)... he explains that they haven't seen this in someone younger than 65, and that it's usally caused by hardening of the arteries -- the artery hardens, and pushes on the vein, then the flow through the vein is slowed, so the retina isn't getting enough blood and therefore isn't working at full capacity. He was asking do I have diabetes (no), high blood pressure (no -- in fact when they took it that am at the family doc it was 120/80 -- PERFECT), high cholesterol (I don't know) etc. etc. etc. He explains that if this doesn't correct itself they can fix it by doing a laser procedure, or surgery. When he said the "S" word (the poor guy had no idea what I've been through in the last year) I had tears running down my face... he looked a bit lost, then reached over and took ONE of the "doctor's-office-tissues" (which are all of 6 inches square) and handed it to me.

Back out to the lobby for more waiting (and more crying)... about 15 minutes later the photograph room was ready -- they called me back. The whole process was pretty cool and I did come home with a printout of what they took -- you can clearly see the difference between my left eye -- the veins are like a roadmap, mostly straight and spread out -- and my right eye -- which looked like a plate of ramen noodles, all twisted up and freaking out...

(I think Andy will probly upload the scan of this printout -- but he did mention that it's not as clear as the original)

So he sent me away with his nurse calling my family doc to set up more tests and an appointment for the next day that I had to confirm. And made a follow-up appointment with his office in about 2 weeks.

Next day I go to family doc again -- this time my doctor is in, and I enjoy explaining (yet again) what has happened etc. and all that he said etc.. She orders a gazillion blood tests (so many that they had to draw SEVEN vials of blood) and is testing me for everything under the sun.
Went next door for my second blood draw in less than 2 weeks (am really starting to DREAD these) and the girl says "ummm do they normally ask for THIS much blood from you????" and I explain no, that it's something wrong etc. She gets me on stick number two and fills the vials up (I took a pic on my phone of this -- will post it later). She was really nice and did a good job.

I was on my way soon enough -- they said that the results of the tests would kind of trickle in -- some of the tests are common but some are fairly rare ones that they don't run all the time -- they wait til they have a few of them to do together, so those might take up to a week before we get results.

As far as my eye is concerned -- I'm wearing this big black patch over it when I do things like drive or knit or read or use the pc (it made for VERY funny jokes when I still beat some guys at online golf with ONE eye!!! "man -- you must really stink if you got owned by a GIRL... not just any girl... a pirate girl!!!"). My friends have given me grief (and my family too) it's become a bit of a joke -- today at knitting when people came in and asked what happened to my eye I told them Mary popped me one (Mary is this sweet lady who is in her 70s I think who wouldn't hurt a fly) and she'd grin really big and start telling a story about how I was in this bar partying last night and how I picked a fight with some big guy... she's a riot!!!

It's still pretty much the same -- no better no worse -- the best kind of description I have for what it feels like is that either you have been rubbing your eyes and you get that pattern for a few seconds over your vision -- you can still see the room but the pattern is over top of that.... or
it's like you are wearing a pair of glasses and the left lens is perfectly clear and clean etc. but the right one is smudged all to heck with fingerprints etc. -- you can still see through it but nothing is in focus really.

Posted by kristen at February 15, 2008 3:06 PM