Friday, December 28, 2007

Walter's Eyesight Not So Great

Walter had an eye doctor appointment this afternoon. He last saw his doctors 4 weeks ago. Since then he has experience a further decline of his eyesight. For a couple weeks he was seeing floaters but those have mostly cleared up. The biggest issue right now is what seems to be a fog over whatever he sees.

How does this affect Walter? At this point he has almost no night vision left. And in normal indoor lighting he sometimes becomes disoriented - something that was not a problem for him before.

Over the last several months since Walter can no longer see the big E on the eye chart there is another method they use to measure his sight. A technician positions herself across the room from Walter and holds up a certain number of fingers on her hand. Walter has to tell her how many fingers are being held up. They move the hand closer until Walter can see it. A month or so ago Walter could count the fingers correctly around 8 feet away (that distance is my own rough guess). Today Walter was only able to identify the number of fingers when they were about 2-1/2 feet away from him.

The doctor examined Walter's eye carefully. The good news is his eye pressure is normal now - about 18. And the retina looks good. But there is some inflammation in the eye and that's the only thing the doctor could see that might be causing the problem. The solution (we hope) is to increase his dose of prednisolone from once a day up to 3 times a day. He doesn't go back for another 5 weeks unless there are further problems.

We're wishing for a good result from the increased prednisolone. It's hoping and praying time now.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I hope everything goes well, and a happy new year to you all :)