Post by Steve on Mar 20, 2017 10:04:38 GMT -8
One of the classic comments about diabetes is that it causes blindness. That is true, but with luck you can postpone or maybe avoid the onset of such a drastic change in your life. "After many years of high blood sugar levels, the walls of the blood vessels in the retina become weak and thin. The weak areas can bulge out and form pouches called micro-aneurysms." —Kaiser
Diabetes can bring on retinopathy, diabetic macular edema, cataracts, and glaucoma. Everything starts with overdosing on carbs causing high blood pressure and high blood sugar. High blood pressure then creates high pressure in the eyes and you are in for trouble. Shots in the eye can lower the pressure, even a drain can be put in to help. But that's no fun. Excessive glucose damages the tiny vessels of the eye by making them thicker and they pull in more fluid from surrounding tissue. That distorts the lens and therefore, your vision.
When diabetes damages the lining of the vessels, they get thinner and leak. New vessels form. This is proliferative neovascular retinopathy. The leaks distort the lens. The solution is laser surgery to destroy the leaking vessels. It isn't much fun.
The eye is dilated and a shot of fluorescein angiogram dye is injected into the hand, minutes later (after a wave of queasiness) the dye marks leaking vessels in the retina that are soon to be blasted. You're sitting with your head pressed against the headrest and staring at a blank white field. The doctor sits opposite and like some bizarre arcade game, he controls the laser and aims at the vessels, one at a time. PING!.... a laser shot hits the back of the eye with a mild punch and a black "bullet hole" appears on the white screen. Ping, ping ping! The shots keep coming, softly hitting the eye. It is not painful, just interesting. Fifteen minutes later, it's over...for the day. You will probably be back.
I wish I could tell you how well it all turned out, but I have lost any useful vision in that eye. Ironic that the one eye that had all the attention (cataract surgery was first) is the eye that now does nothing I can appreciate.
Diabetes can bring on retinopathy, diabetic macular edema, cataracts, and glaucoma. Everything starts with overdosing on carbs causing high blood pressure and high blood sugar. High blood pressure then creates high pressure in the eyes and you are in for trouble. Shots in the eye can lower the pressure, even a drain can be put in to help. But that's no fun. Excessive glucose damages the tiny vessels of the eye by making them thicker and they pull in more fluid from surrounding tissue. That distorts the lens and therefore, your vision.
When diabetes damages the lining of the vessels, they get thinner and leak. New vessels form. This is proliferative neovascular retinopathy. The leaks distort the lens. The solution is laser surgery to destroy the leaking vessels. It isn't much fun.
The eye is dilated and a shot of fluorescein angiogram dye is injected into the hand, minutes later (after a wave of queasiness) the dye marks leaking vessels in the retina that are soon to be blasted. You're sitting with your head pressed against the headrest and staring at a blank white field. The doctor sits opposite and like some bizarre arcade game, he controls the laser and aims at the vessels, one at a time. PING!.... a laser shot hits the back of the eye with a mild punch and a black "bullet hole" appears on the white screen. Ping, ping ping! The shots keep coming, softly hitting the eye. It is not painful, just interesting. Fifteen minutes later, it's over...for the day. You will probably be back.
I wish I could tell you how well it all turned out, but I have lost any useful vision in that eye. Ironic that the one eye that had all the attention (cataract surgery was first) is the eye that now does nothing I can appreciate.