Thrown for a Loop

What a month and thrown for a loop. My newly acquired partial blindness in my left eye threw me for another loop this past month. Yes, I have trouble seeing much in that eye, and the conflicting signals between my right and left eye confuse my brain. The result? It has to work in ways it never has, elevating headaches and fatigue. I’ve also suffered from severe fatigue by getting less than five hours a night for a month straight. At least with sleep, I’m improving, now getting a minimum of seven hours of restful sleep a night.

But that’s not the loop I referred to in the opening line. Nope, not at all. Since last May when I suffered my #CRAO, I’ve been telling my doctors my eye was sore all the time. They noted it in my assessment and moved on to more pressing issues. Over the last month, the soreness continued to get worse. Last week, it opened the turbocharger and knocked me for a loop. Now my eye was visibly red, my eyelid partially closed, and I felt outright pain. WTF?

Last Friday it was awful and remained so over the weekend. I figured out that wearing my eye patch lessened the pain, so I started wearing my eye patch full-time until I had my physical fortunately scheduled for first thing Monday morning. My physician strongly recommended I see the doctor treating my retina problem that caused the blindness.

Assessments and Diagnosis of my Loop

He was glad I came in first thing yesterday. Three hours later, and after various assessments and tests, he determined the issue. Blood vessels in my eye feeding the retina were leaking, and new vessels were growing to compensate for the occlusion last May. Not just a few, mind you, but all of them were leaking blood all over the inside of my eye. Effectively, I’m bleeding into the inside of my eye. He showed me the pictures. What I saw shocked me, and apparently, so did my doctor. Trust me, you don’t want #bloodvesselleakage.

But that is not all. Using a contrast dye, the doctor could see the progression of blood entering my eye and spreading out to all the capillaries. In my right eye, it took less than fifteen seconds to feed the cells of my eye. Not so with my left eye. It took nearly a full minute to travel the same path and ending in a bloom similar to blooming ornamental fountain grass. My blood vessels all end in blooms similar to the blooms in the grass photo. It’s ugly.

He told me that typically a thing like this would occur in both eyes, not one. Just as my concussion doctors tell me, I am a unique and unusual case.

Where before, I had a blockage of blood in the eye, now I have too much, and much of it leaking into the eye, and not getting to the edges of the eye where it’s needed. While I may be paranoid, I’m worried I just might lose the eye all together. It won’t hold me back, and I can use software to do speech to text to write my books if it becomes necessary.

Prognosis of my Loop

There’s no prognosis yet, nor a definitive course of action. We spoke about three courses of action, all with good and bad points, or benefits and side effects if you like.

My retina doctor will confer this week with my primary physician and my neurologist (handling my post-concussion treatment) to discuss the options. I should hear from them by the end of the week. In the meantime, I am taking steroid drops in my eye to alleviate the soreness and pain.

Writing

So, what does this mean to continuing to write Avril’s story? I admit it. It’s been hard, and I have made little progress. I have decided on the book cover, and the chapter I am slowly working on relates to it. A lot of what I have written, I’ve tossed, for poor writing out of sync with the plot.

As a friend tells me, I am leaving poor #Avril dangling on the end of a rope. I’ve got to get her relief soon and get this book finished. Wish me luck. In the meantime, check out her earlier books in the #Consortium series, found at : https://richardverry.com/stories/consortium/