Good evening everyone. First and foremost I would like to thank Mike for this site, because of it I have been able to talk to my doctors about my condition and am in the process of getting treatment. I know what to look for and the dangers of long term steroid drop use. My name is Jason, I am a 34 yr old male from Tampa, FL. I have had 20/20 vision all my life with 2 or 3 floaters in my eyes but no other issues except shingles at age 22 (chicken pox when I was a baby). I was before this a 5 mile a day runner and an avid rec league ice hockey player. A little over 2 1/2 weeks ago, I was sitting on my couch watching TV and felt a twinge on the top of my left cheek. I thought nothing about until 2 hours later when I went to the bathroom, I noticed that both of my eyes were bloodshot red. I have never seen my eyes this red even back in my high school days . I got nervous and decided to go to the clinic to make sure I was ok.
At the clinic I was diagnosed with "pink eye" and given 2 separate types of drops. The next day I decided to go see my ophthalmologist who I only been to once before for a perfect eye exam. At the ophthalmologist he noted I had inflammation in the front of my eye and gave me some anti inflammatory drops and told me to stop taking the anti bacterial drops from the clinic. 2 days later my vision got extremely blurry and I was unable to read even the computer. I had a fever, chills and diarrhea and slept for most of the day the next 3 or 4 days. The blurry vision poses a problem as I work in an office, so I went back to the ophthalmologist and he diagnosed me with acute bilateral anterior uveitis. He advised me to take durezol every 2 hours for a week and come back.
After a week the redness in my eyes were completely gone and my vision had improved but only in the near sight. Thankfully I was able to read a computer and go back to work. I am able to read and see clearly like I did before but anything beyond 10 feet was and still is very blurry. I also noticed these small dots or pepper like spots in my field of vision and there were hundreds of them! My eye DR noticed the improvement and told me to take the durezol 4xs a day for 4 days and 2 xs a day for 3 more days after and come back to see him. Unfortunately, at that point I didnt improved since the initial improvement I saw on the drops. When I went back in the third time he said that now I have inflammation in the back of my eye which could be causing me to see these bubbles and referred me to the uveitis specialist in St Pete.
I now have an appointment with her on Monday (which will mark 3 weeks since this started exactly) and am very nervous. Questions going through my head all the time or why did this happen to me? Am I ever going to be able to see clearly again? I am hoping for the best but fearing the worst. I also have my regular DR scheduled for the next day after that as well. In the interim I am still on durezol for 2x a day but I have been taking some of my gfs old ibuprofen 800mg 3x a day to self medicate to maybe help the inflammation. This has helped some of the dots but they are still there en masse during a blue sky.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to run like I used too since before this happened and only went back last week to play hockey which because of the blurriness and dots was very distracting. I dont want to chance messing my eyes up further before this is resolved so I plan to take it easy and see what the specialist has to say.
Thanks for Listening,
Jason.
I have uveitis :(
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