(Today: one day after)
The day of..... there are more pics if you scroll down....
Pars Planitis Ever heard of it? I hadn't 5/6 years ago when I was diagnosed with it. (Wow, I'm making it sound really bad ;). The above picture looks like I hate life and I really didn't :D.
It all started when I was newly married and camping with my inlaws. We had those cute "environment-friendly (not)" white styrofoam cups to drink from. I filled mine with water and sat there drinking when suddenly I noticed dirt floating ALL over in my cup!! "Who put dirt in my cup?!" No one fessed up. Finally Trevor looked in it and said "There's no dirt in your cup." WHAT?!?!?!!?
So to the Shopko eye doctor I went.
He dilated my eyes, took one look at them and said, "You need to get yourself to an Optometrist."
I headed to the Optometrist....wow...they were a lot more "eye-ish". Well this doc dilated my eyes and said, "You need to see a Retina Specialist"
A what? I didn't even know Retina Specialists exist.
So in I went.
My retina specialist gave the "pars planitis" diagnosis. It is simply an autoimmune response in your eyeballs and your eyes make all these antibodies that float all in your eye and can inflame it and blur the vision and even cause blindness cuz they rest on the retina, so you have to keep up on your checkups to try and prevent blindness if at all possible.
Ok. well that was fun. He had me get all sorts of tests to check for all these other diseases that can cause pars planitis, but all were negative. I guess this disease can also happen on its own.
He was debating giving me steroid injections behind my eye and then I got pregnant and we moved to Boise. So I ignored the whole "pars planitis" thing.
We moved back to Utah and I decided maybe I better contact my retina specialist and get a check up since it had been years....3 to be exact. He told me I better come in at least every 6 months because waiting longer could get me blind.
I used to have 20/20 vision but the pars planitis (which was more severe in my left eye) had decreased my vision to 60/20. So doc decided a month ago to give me my first steroid shot.
It was A LOT worse than I could have imagined!!! The two pictures on the bottom of me in the green shirt were after getting the first shot. The rest of the pictures are just from yesterday after getting my 2nd shot. The steroid shot is supposed to help break up the floaters and decrease the bluriness.
Description: the doc lifts up my eyelid and jams a q-tip up as far as he can to get it numb.....then repeats with a new q-tip. (oh and also gives my eyeball numbing drops). Then he holds up my eyelid while I look down as far as I can and he injects a needle up underneath my eyelid and in all the way behind my eyeball! then he says I'll feel some "pressure". Yeah okay, my eyeball felt like it wanted to dislodge!! Well, afterwards, my eye was droopy for a few days and it only felt like I got decked in the eye. (oh yeah and I got a migraine from it)
The first shot totally improved my vision. My left eye went from 60/20 to 25/20!!!! Wow!! I hated that shot but had to get the second one. The second one actually didn't give me the 'gag and throw up sensation' so I think my anxiety was more under control about it. But it sure was worse getting over it round two. My eyelid was bleeding underneath hence the bloodshot look.
Below are the pictures of the first shot about a month ago: (really not too bad....)
very dilated eyes :) but my eye didn't bleed like it did with the second shot shown above.
you can barely even tell...just looks a little droopy.
