Eyeball Update

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I went to the retinologist this afternoon for my monthly examination, and received another injection in my left eye (for wet macular degeneration). Everything went as expected.

I’m a little bit worse for the wear and tear, so posting will be somewhat light this evening.

I’m also cheerful and filled with gratitude, because just fifteen years ago there was no way to treat wet macular degeneration. By this point I would have been well on my way to blindness. A needle in the eye every now and again seems a negligible price to pay in the larger scheme of things.

20 thoughts on “Eyeball Update”

  1. I’m sure all here wish the Baron well, even if we may not see eye-to-eye with him on all issues.

    It’s an opportune moment to bring to readers’ attention that a combination of dietary zinc and luteins has been shown to delay the onset ARMD and, once it has started, to slow its progress. While a proper diet is probably the best approach, the AREDS2 dietary formulation is is a good supplement for those inclined to follow the Trump diet.

    Here is a good general link on the subject:

    http://www.webrn-maculardegeneration.com/areds-2.html

    • Yes, I’m on the full AREDS regimen, which includes lots of lutein, zinc, vitamin C, and other good eyeball-related stuff. And Dymphna feeds me plenty of chard, turnip greens, kale, etc. because they have lots of one of the important ingredients, although I forget exactly which one.

  2. Just do what Vance’s alter ego would advise. I’m certain that somewhere in LIFE there’s a riposte encompassing the preceding posts.

  3. How about making the fonts on your site bigger? That would help other people that enjoy reading your site kept their eye site … Chees and wish you well!

  4. I for one like the size of the fonts just fine. A larger font isn’t going to help us keep our eye sight. We age, we fall apart, and off into the unknown we go. C’est la vie.

  5. Dear Baron, that’s great news and we all who visit your site should rejoice … feats of science like this one always remind me of the inscription on that Holy Grail of scientists of all stripes: Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes.

    Yes – Vergilius, Nobel medal.

  6. Baron – glad to hear the treatment is working and I sincerely wish that it will continue to do so. And perhaps improve your condition!

  7. Thanks to the Prophet (PBUH) that the Muslim scholars following his shining example invented mathematics, optics, chemistry, medicine, pharmacology, electronics, vitreous injections and everything scientific back in the first centuries after Hijra, without them there would be no treatment for macular disorders today!

    And on a serious tune – best wishes to achieve control of the disorder and improvement with treatment! Please take good care of yourself, Baron 🙂

    • Sure they did. And we’re so grateful.

      In the shared knowledge the rest of us call reality, the angiogenesis-inhibiting medication poked into the B’s eye was discovered/created originally by Dr. Judah Folkman at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Years ago, I saw his book on the “new” shelves at the library and was delighted to read it, mainly because I knew him slightly when he was less famous for this (he was the head of Pediatric Surgery at one point) and because I was so familiar with Division 28, the cancer floor at Children’s. His research made the prognosis for leukemia in children far less grim.

      Here’s his wiki:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Folkman

      Here’s his book:

      Dr. Folkman’s War: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer

      https://amzn.to/2IA8oRj

      I remain deeply grateful to him for his work. The thing about gratitude is that it transcends death.

  8. I have had this eye problem for a few years now. last year I was in a study requiring two pills a day for a year. In all that time I never once needed a shot but after a month of waiting for the study to end and looking forward to this drug coming to market they killed the program.
    Have you heard about this study?

    • No, I hadn’t heard of that one. I’d sure like to take a pill in place of a needle in the eye!

  9. Thank you all for your good wishes.

    My condition has generally stabilized. When it starts to flare up, as it did back in April, I make an appointment with the retinologist and the regimen of injections begins again. After my eye has improved and stabilized again, the appointments become less frequent, and eventually the shots become unnecessary — which was the case for almost four years.

    The AREDS supplements seem to have improved my vision overall, so that I actually see better now than I did back in early 2013, when the macular degeneration first appeared.

  11. .
    My most heartfelt congratulations, Baron,

    I myself got WMD diagnosed nearly 4 years ago. Today I am almost blind on my right and have 9% sightability on the left eye. I cannot read anythin
    but the computer screen, where I can enlarge and convert all all text to Arial and 300% to be able to read it through a magnifiing glass. Probababely and hopefully I will not die blind as I am allready being in the valley of death shadow as an 83+ oldster.

    I cannot see detailes but my allround sight ability is quite OK – i can bicykle to the supermarkt to bye food, but I cannot read the labels!
    I have got 16 injektions in the left eye during this time.
    Old age is not hilarious.

    • Yes, he (Dr Judah) is sort of encyclopedist, spanning from paed surgery to atibody treatment… This is a breed of scientists disappearing now, most of us cannot even follow fully the developments in our own narrow field.. There still are a couple of such people in my specialty. The great MJ Aminoff who does not only span by knowledge and innovation all neurology, but authors a very successful “Neurology in General Diseases” textbook, or the Catalonian Josep Deleu professor in Immunology and Neurology. God kep them all.

    • .

      I regret that I did not mention what medication I get injected into the eye – it may be of some interest maybe.

      The drug is called Eylea (Bayer). A teaml of three people at this university hospital eye clinic does nothing but injects eyes all day. I cycle there about 15 minutes – at least something positive.

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