And Waiting

Friday May 29, 2009 - I went back to the ophthalmologist to have my eye checked again. He needed to look at my eye when it was not dilated since it was still dilated from my drops on Tuesday. He said my eye looked fine. He said with the steroid treatment I should regain most of my vision but may have a blind spot and it would take several weeks. My vision has improved a little. Not anything to be excited about, but improvement. Also, Jerry being in the panic he is in about the whole MS issues, asked the ophthalmologist if he could give him more information about the MRI even though we knew he is not the neurologist. He did say that it looks pretty probable that there is some kind of demyelinating disease. He made it sounds like we needed to be prepared for treatment and more testing. Great! He also asked if my appointment was set with the neurologist and when I told him no he seemed a little irritated and got his nurse on the phone immediately. Well, come to find out the neurologist's office is closed until 2. So they would have to call them back. I got a call from the ophthalmologist's office at 2:10 and they told me the neurologist's scheduler was out for the day so they would call me first thing Monday morning and squeeze me in.

Amanda

1,000 mg of steroids YUCK!

Thursday May 28, 2009 - I started the 1,000 mg of oral steroids. This steroid is not in pill form, it is a powder that I have to mix in a smoothie and drink. So I am thinking okay I can drink a smoothie no problem. Well they didn't tell me it was going to taste like vomit. So it took me 3 hours or so to finally finish it. UGH! The doctor did warn me that I would probably not sleep much for the next three days. I slept about 3 hours.:(

Amanda

Waiting........

Wednesday May 27, 2009 - We waited until 12:30 to finally get the results from the MRI. They confirmed that I had optic neuritis and they were going to treat me with 3 days of IV steroids and the 11 days of oral steroids. So that I could get the IV outpatient the ophthalmologist was going to send me to a neurologist that was set up to do the IV. I didn't hear back from the ophthalmologist until around 4 with further instructions. He said the neurologist was leaving town on Thursday, but they wanted me to get started on treatment so they decided to give me 3 days of very strong oral steroids (1,000 mg to be exact) and then do 11 days of a lower dose of steroids. The ophthalmologist also said that he was sending my MRI to the neurologist to look over and that he wanted to see me as soon as he got back into town. He said there were 10 blips on the MRI. By this time I have a pit in my stomach again. He told me the neurologist would call me today to schedule that appointment. I never got the call.

Amanda

No abrasion?

Tuesday May 26, 2009 - I called the ophthalmologist in the morning and got in a few hours later. They checked my eye for the abrasion and found nothing. So my first reaction was to panic. They did every test they could and I failed every one of them. By this time I could not see anything out of my right eye, not even light. So the ophthalmologist comes in and tells me he is sending me for an MRI to see what is going on. He said that he was pretty sure it was probably optic neuritis be he needed to confirm it. He also told me that MS can be linked to optic neuritis and said that because of my age and gender my risk is higher. He said that if he found anything abnormal on the MRI he would send me to a neurologist. The MRI took an hour. I never thought I could lay in one of those machines being claustrophobic, but it went fine.

Amanda

Memorial Day

Monday May 25, 2009 Memorial Day - I woke up not feeling any better but didn't want to ruin mine or anyone else's Memorial Day, so I decided to suck it up and call the ophthalmologist on Tuesday morning.

Amanda

ER visit

Sunday May 24, 2009 - By now my vision had only gotten worse and my pain was getting worse. When Jerry got home form work we decided to make a trip to the ER. When I got the the ER the nurse checked my vision and it was 20/100. Yikes! I could not even see where she was pointing on the chart for me to read. So I finally saw the ER doctor and he mentioned doing a CT scan and I agreed. Before he would do the scan, however he wanted to look at my eye and follow up with an ophthalmologist he had on call. When he did the eye exam he determined that I had a corneal abrasion. I thought that was a little weird considering I had not had pain on the front of my eye and didn't remember getting poked or hit in the eye with anything. So the ER doctor decided to call the ophthalmologist with his findings and treated me for a corneal abrasion which consisted of dilating drops every 8 hours and antibiotic drops every hour. My discharge papers instructions from the ER were to follow up with the ER in the morning if I didn't feel any better and to follow up with the ophthalmologist in his office.

Amanda

Time to see the doctor!

Friday May 22, 2009 - I was still having pain and my vision was getting worse so I decided I better go see my optometrist before the weekend. So they squeezed me in Friday morning. The optometrist looked at my eye and checked my vision and told me everything looked fine and my vision was 20/20 even though I told her everything was fuzzy. So she gave me eye drops and told me to call my regular family doctor to get pain medication and sent me on my way. When I got home I called my regular doctor and he was already gone for the day. So I decided I would suck it up through the three day weekend and go in on Tuesday.

Amanda

This headache will not go away!

Thursday May 21, 2009 - I woke again this morning with the same pain behind my right eye. Once again I took medication and once again no relief.

Amanda

Sinus Headache

Wednesday May 20, 2009 - I woke up with a slight pain behind my right eye. Having just finished antibiotics for a sinus infection, I just figured it was sinus related and took sinus headache medication. The medication did not seem to help with the pain. I also noticed that my vision was a little blurred in my right eye but just went on with my day.

Amanda