I am, according to my Opthalmologist. Both wet and dry, right now.
I know. One more thing to add to the damn list, isn’t it?
Also I have cataracts, no big deal about that - old age;). Corrective surgery will fix me.
A corneal transplant will fix the MD? Or might I be a poor candidate?
Anyone have experience? I’d like to hear from you if so.
Thanks
Quasi
Quasi, sorry you’re going through this on top of everything else. Macular degeneration is scary stuff – which, unfortunately, runs in my family.
Let me move this from MPSIMS to IMHO, which is where medical topics go.
Sorry to hear that, and good luck. Tell the doctor that it is imperative that you have ways of seeing the SDMB.
I don’t know much about corneal transplants, but the cornea is on the opposite side of the eyeball from the macula. Is that supposed to help?
Aw, Quasi! I’m so sorry to hear this. My grandmother had macular degeneration. I remember she had someone come in and install all new lighting in her apartment. It really helped.
Here is a link: http://www.amd.org/living-with-amd/28-the-importance-of-good-lighting.html
Yeah, Rhiannon8404. I’ve been reading all over the net and the need for more light has been a symptom of mine as well. Another one I can best describe this way: You know that sometimes at the beginning of a movie, they include historical stuff regarding what you’re about to see? Well, at normal viewing distance, that appears very blurry to me. I have to get right up near the screen if I want to see what it says.
Thanks
Q
My dad had that. I’m sorry for you. Ask your doc about lutein supplements. It helped my father’s vision and his ophthalmologist was surprised by how much it helped years after his initial diagnosis. It might not help, but it’s worth asking about.
One of my bandmates from the late 60’s has it too, ITD. He’s now legally blind, but still plays a mean blues guitar with a band he formed after ours split up, so you know… should I get upset over this and it being one more thing to deal with?
Well, maybe, but I won’t. If the worst does happen I will have had 60 plus years of seeing and a lot of folks aren’t that lucky.
I’ll check on the lutein supplements, thanks!
Q
Quasi, I work in that field. Corneal transplants won’t do a thing, I’m afraid, since that’s the front of your eye, and macular degeneration hurts the inside back of it.
Since you have wet AMD (age-related macular degeneration), you really want to follow your ophthalmologist’s recommendations about treating it. This may involve injections into the eye of drugs like Lucentis or Eylea, but they do work and are the best treatments available for this problem.
Ferret Herder! It’s been a LONG time, Hon and good to see you! The reason I wrote corneal transplants was because I was on the Mayo Clinic site getting info, and saw it, but it must have been a sub-category or something.
Injection into the eyes, huh? I hope they’ll put me to sleep for that, because that sounds so torturous, they may have to catch me first!
The doc said it was a mixture of wet and dry and that he’d keep an eye on it, so to speak. I wish I had asked him a little more about it then, but that’s why I come here: to relieve the pain of ignorance.
Thanks
Quasi
It’s really better than it sounds, I promise. A good doctor will numb up your eye nicely, put a little bracket in to hold the lid open wide temporarily, and have you look in the totally opposite direction from where the injection will go. If they do it right, the betadine (antiseptic) wash will hurt more than the injection proper, just because it’s irritating.
I just wanted to put the idea out there so you can think about it, rather than having a doctor spring it on you and want to do the injection the same day. Those injected medicines are pretty much the best treatments we have right now, and I don’t want you rejecting them out of fear. I know it’s a scary thought but they can hold your vision stable or improve it for a while. Some patients need an injection every few months, some more often.
I know a few patients with AMD who really love reading from a Kindle tablet. They let you adjust the print size and the amount of backlighting. One patient complained that he couldn’t read any longer unless he was sitting in a room full of bright sunlight; now he has no problems with his Kindle.
I spend a lot of time with my Kindle too, and have enlarged the print a little as a do still use reading glasses.
Also thanks very much for the heads up about the injections, and more than that, thanks for caring!
Q
My sister in law has the wet version and has had two or three injections and I believe she’s taking “eye” vitamins - lutein, etc.
She does enjoy her Kindle, and a “low vision” keyboard with big bold labels on bright yellow keys is helping. Offhand, I think the brand was You See Keys, or something along those lines.
As for the injections, it’s true that they don’t hurt, but you do need to get around the squeamish thoughts. You are at least able to look away and not see the needle, unlike something like LASIK where you can’t look away.
Went in for my annual eye exam last year, and ended up being told I have the beginning of Macular Degeneration… Totally freaked me out as a hard of hearing person - suddenly I had visions of becoming Helen Keller…
I’m supposed to look at a paper on my fridge weekly to make sure my vision doesn’t suddenly change… if things suddenly get wavy, I’m supposed to get in to the eye doc urgently…
I’m now taking Lutein, Bilberry and Taurine daily on the advice of my eye doctor…
Supposedly it might help things stay where they are, and not get any worse… here’s hoping…
Well hell Quasi, these old bodies of ours sure do give us fits, don’t they. But I love that we have dopers here to help with good information.
Keep your chin up. Tell Dondra she’ll need to sit a little closer to you from now on. Take Care.
I was recently diagnosed with stage 1(of 10). My mom developed severe AMD. I am trying to stay calm, as I am only 52 and I was planning on using these eyes for a while.
A close friend, who’s only in his early forties, now has late stage MD. He says he has no night vision and even in bright light it’s like looking through cardboard tubes–no peripheral vision at all. IOW, he’s all but blind, though he can still see a monitor or TV screen. It really sucks.
One of my closest friends has MD, and has been living with it for over a decade. She manages well, like you she sits very close to her TV to see it and finds it better to have a small TV up close than a big one at a regular distance. She uses the magnifying bar function on her PC to read text.
She has also raised two girls, holds a couple of jobs and travelled to both Samoa and England since her diagnosis.
Best wishes.
If anyone out there in the US is interested in looking into medical research studies being done on AMD (or any other diseases, for that matter), check out http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ - plug in the name of the disease and your area into the “find a clinical trial” part of the website, and it’ll turn up various studies, tell you whether they’re still recruiting, and give you contact info. All studies that are ongoing in the US are supposed to be registered there.
(Disclaimer: I work in ophthalmology research but am not currently doing an AMD-related study.)