Don't Rub Your Eyes After Handling Zoanthids/Palythoa

Yeah, I'm like that on roids 24/7. I warn my work before I go on them, and they know to only bother me if 100% needed

Hang in there, Hopefully someday soon, you'll be looking at that drivers license pic and be laughing about this ordeal.

Stay tough
me on steroids


you on steroids;


lol

 

omg..........that makes me laugh!!!! Not much has been doing that for me this week!!!
thanks!

I did have my first contact lens mishap.........i always rub my eyes and have been working not doing that. However today was at my desk at work and was rubbing my eye and wondered what the heck fell out of my eye. There was my dried up curled up contact! Luckily didnt tear it. Will have to work hard to stop this as when/if the eye heals i have bought myself at least a hard lens in bad eye. If i rub that it would not be good

 

well saw the doctor today again. I found out i have been calling it an ulcer all this time but it is not an ulcer. It is an epithelial corneal defect. Basically the only difference is an ulcer is associated with an infection and epithelial corneal defect is not???? But apperantly a big enough difference that i was corrected today.

Basically the defect has finallly covered itself completly with new epithelial cells, and this is the reason i have not had any symptoms for a couple weeks. So that is great news, it has finally healed. Apparently you can not always tell the difference between a healed and nonhealed defect without dying the eye with this special dye, so more then likely when i had my contact lens fitting this weekend it was healed then he said.

The problem is..........i have a large crater in the center of my eye with a very large amount of scar tissue that has formed.(that is what I still see and thought was the ulcer when i look into the eye) While i had been focusing on worrying about the scar tissue the real concern is actually the crater in the eye and the multiple areas of thinning of the cornea.The cornea is really "pimpled and bumpy" Basically he said that what i am seeing right now is what you would see if you looked through a prism. The light goes through the cornea and scatters all of the eye versus hitting the one spot it should.

So, he is going to wait another 4 weeks and recheck it at that time. While he said the defect is healed, he said i am a very long way from being done healing. He still can not say how much vision i will have come back and both doctors are very concerned because it is located right in the smack dab middle of my eye in front of the pupil. He is tapering me off the steroids, though i will be on them for at least another 4 weeks but will go down to 5mg every day for now. He is stopping the antibiotic eye drops and the antibiotic pill and continueing the steroid eye drops.

He is hoping that when i go back on Dec 15th they will be able to try a special contact lens to see if it improves my vison. Honestly neither of the doctors seemed very confident about this working as everytime I asked either of them about the lens they kept saying.........it is just right in the worst spot possible.

They did say that if the contact doesnt work the next option would be surgery, meaning corneal transplant. Even with that the main doctor did not reassure me very much that I will regain my vision in that eye much

But, honestly I am very happy today overall that the defect had finally healed. I was very concerned that it was not healing and of course worse case scenerios kept popping into my head, ie i was going to have to have the eye removed etc.

So all in all, today was a good day!! I can live without having much vision in the left eye. In fact my new nickname is "patchy"

 

You have a wonderful attitude Mel, I admire that.

Better to have honest MD's in my opinion.

I hope the contact works out better than they predict.

You sure a trooper.

 

thanks Cheryl!!! I hope so too!
I dont think Curt will say I have been a trooper lately. I have been so up and down with roid rage! I cant even stand myself!!

 

Steroids are bad things long term.

Yeah they are huge in helping with many conditions and a must, but man the side effects and long term side effects are wicked. But you already know all that.

 

Really???? I hadn't noticed. LOLOLOL

 

Glad to hear things are still progressing. Hopefully your cornea will recover without surgery.

 

one adverse effect that i had not thought of........i honestly have lost my desire to care for any of my tanks anymore. As a result, we have had our SPS system crash and wipe out most of our sps and challices. What happened was we had 1 pump failure (though we had 4 other pumps going), the kh dropped, phosphates jumped up, nitrates rose.........basically a cluster mess.
(i was responsible for dosing the kh and basically caring for this tank. I probably should have said something to Curt sooner then after we lost several hundred dollars of corals)

Our fish are all doing well and the killer paly is in another tank and is thriving! I cant kill that thing no matter how hard i try!
The LFS owner i was working for has been trying to get me to come back to work, but i dont plan on it. I even went to a friends LFS hoping that it would get me motivated but it didnt. Oh well, not going to take anything down.....as hopefully the funk i am in will go away soon

 

go back to doctor tomorrow afternoon again! Excited and scared at the same time. Excited that maybe after close to 4 months, this might be coming to an end. The plan is that if the crater has filled in, then i will be fitted for a custom made lens to see if that helps the vision. Scared that if this doesnt work, then the final step will be surgery, ie a corneal transplant. Plus I am very scared to put anything in my eye.

I am going in positive that the lens is going to work, however the last time i was there he wasnt all that hopefull. I will say the eye feels great and I have little to no pain anymore. Vision wise is much better than it was before, but I have problems with lights being so distorted that I am blinded by them and still have to wear a patch at night to drive

I have a very large scar still in the middle of my eye that is visible. Hopefully that is the crater that is filled all the way in. I think the best way to describe what I see out of that eye is put your glasses on, smear a thick layer of vaseline over the lens and put a square of dark paper over the center.