Side effects of dilating drops?
Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 5:50 pm
I'm having my first (hopefully only) bout of iritis. It took about two weeks for it to be diagnosed correctly, since my GP told me it was a viral infection and that I should "tough it out". I've been on prednisolone acetate (six drops a day) for almost three weeks now. I was on dilating drops for about a week and a half (two drops a day), until the iris came unstuck from the lens.
During the time that I was on the dilating drops, I was having severe cycling depressive episodes - periods of an hour or two where I couldn't stop crying, interspersed with pretty normal mood (for background, I was on antidepressants for almost ten years, and finally got off them in December). They started the day I went on the dilating drops, and pretty much went away about two days after I stopped. I asked my opthamologist about them (before I stopped the dilating drops), and she told me that neither those nor the steroids had any systemic effects, and that I should talk to my GP, which I did the same day I stopped the dilating drops.
My GP also said that the eye medicines didn't have systemic effects, and wrote me a prescription for a new antidepressant. (I told him that these rapid-cycling symptoms felt totally different from anything I had had in my previous depression, but he dismissed that.) I haven't filled the new script, because I've been feeling better since a couple days after I stopped the dilating drops. I've been trying to get pregnant, and I'm leery of starting a new drug right now if it's not absolutely necessary.
Has anyone experienced depression as a side effect of dilating drops? Am I grasping at straws here? I just feel like something is going on that my doctors are not getting.
During the time that I was on the dilating drops, I was having severe cycling depressive episodes - periods of an hour or two where I couldn't stop crying, interspersed with pretty normal mood (for background, I was on antidepressants for almost ten years, and finally got off them in December). They started the day I went on the dilating drops, and pretty much went away about two days after I stopped. I asked my opthamologist about them (before I stopped the dilating drops), and she told me that neither those nor the steroids had any systemic effects, and that I should talk to my GP, which I did the same day I stopped the dilating drops.
My GP also said that the eye medicines didn't have systemic effects, and wrote me a prescription for a new antidepressant. (I told him that these rapid-cycling symptoms felt totally different from anything I had had in my previous depression, but he dismissed that.) I haven't filled the new script, because I've been feeling better since a couple days after I stopped the dilating drops. I've been trying to get pregnant, and I'm leery of starting a new drug right now if it's not absolutely necessary.
Has anyone experienced depression as a side effect of dilating drops? Am I grasping at straws here? I just feel like something is going on that my doctors are not getting.