The Eye of the Storm

Ok, I was trying to be cute and catchy with my title. Work with me...

Tuesday, I had an eye dr appointment with a specialist in Temple. The doctor compared my eye (and the shingles virus) to a hurricane. Hence the title of this post.

He basically said, that I am forever doomed.

Well, let me go back some... He was a GREAT doctor. The place was clean, friendly, fast (no wait time at all!), and overall my visit was VERY informative. All this time, I kept thinking I keep getting these 'flare-ups' of shingles in my eye from back when I had it the first time. My current eye dr referred me to this specialist (who def knows his stuff!) to see if there was any different treatment we could be doing to keep it at bay longer. Up until this point, I'd have a flare-up, he'd put me on anti-viral meds (oral) and steroid eye drops 4-5x/day. See me every week monitoring, gradually tapering off to 2x/day, 1x/day, etc and then nothing. Until another flare-up, (which was occurring roughly every few weeks) at which point we'd start all over again. Those $20 copays and prescriptions were/are getting old FAST.

Well, this doctor told me that shingles is virus that of course stems from chicken pox (yada yada...know all that good stuff) and that it lays dormant in your body forever (uh..huh...), but that once in your body as a virus (as in the case of my eye 6 mos or so ago), even after its healed, it leaves behind 'fragments' of the virus. It causes no harm and will not really come back. Its just kinda always there. The problem (my problem) that arises is that my well-intentioned body sees those fragments as potential threats. So my immune system (in this case..in my eye) starts attacking those fragments wildly. That attack is what we have been labelling a 'flare-up'. Its not so much the virus thats causing it, but my own body (antibodies/immune system) attacking what it thinks is the virus.
Here comes the analogy to the hurricane. He explained it is similar to a hurricane... For instance, Hurricane Andrew comes through and causes all kinds of problems/damage (that would be the original shingles from 6 mos ago). But it comes through and then is done. (shingles is gone) But it leaves behind a lot of damage. (the fragments of the virus) Then the clean-up crew comes in and starts trying to clean up all this damage (my immune system) and sometimes causes more damage in so doing.

He told me if left on its own, I could definitely lose my eye. :-O That it HAS to be treated/prevented because my own body attacking my eye could destroy my entire eye. Scary stuff huh? But, he also said that this is a fairly common thing. He treats TONS of people with this problem, from head coaches to professional football teams, football players,...he listed off a bunch. And here I thought I was such a stand-out case. I mean, what are the odds? Number one, that I get shingles at such a young age. Number two that I get it twice! (I had it in my 20's as well) Number three that it just so happens to be above my left eye this last time AND it just so happens to take residence IN my eye. But apparently its not so rare and I'm not a freak. :P

So he said the thing to do is to treat your eye - forever (blah) - with steroid drops. The steroid drops will tell your body/immune system to stand down and not try to fight what it thinks is a virus, which will then in turn not destroy my eye. The key, he explained, is to find the lowest dosage possible of steroid drops that will keep this army at bay. He seems to think one drop a day or maybe even one every other day would be enough in my case, but its something that we (me, along with my hometown eye doctor...he even called my eye dr while I was in the office to go through everything) have to monitor and adjust as we go. Also, he wants me to continue taking an anti-viral (higher mg dosage though) once/day. Not so much because he's worried the shingles virus will come back (it just left its fragments behind remember?), but because when you're on steroids of any kind, your immune system is then lowered...all over. Which is what we want for my eye - a lower immune system, but for the rest of my body, not so much. So, hopefully the steroid drops will keep the immune system army at bay in my eye, while the anti-viral will prevent any illness from forming in the rest of my body.

I will probably have to be on this regimen in forever terms. He said he has had some people come completely off of it, but it is a very.slow.process. As in years... And thats if I'm lucky. He also said I would probably be prone to early cataract in that eye and/or glaucoma. Oh joy. But, that as long as I know that and I (along with current eye dr) can be on the lookout for it, it's nothing too un-fixable.

Again, very informative appt and I'm glad I went for that benefit and to understand what's going on in there, but its a little disappointing because he couldn't just give me a magic pill to fix it. :-( And because it looks like I am now on medication in terms of forever. Boo.

So, does all THAT make sense? Well, it did to me. And I felt like sharing, b/c if nothing else, it's interesting to me how your body works and all that. (and I liked the hurricane analogy)


We had to take the girls with us for this little daytrip. Brad had to go with me so he could drive home (they had to dilate my eyes) and no one to watch the kids, so we made a little daytrip out of it (the visit only took maybe an hour). We stopped at the mall and let them play and burn off some riding-in-the-car energy.

And the Halloween store is always a fun place to peruse this time of year...Nothing too exciting though, couldn't find too much to do in the big ol metropolis of Temple. So we ate dinner and drove back home with my pocketfull of prescriptions and free samples (gotta love free samples!). But before we left, we plopped the girls into one of those photo booth and got these cute pictures....