Living With Iritis For 9 Months Now

[sarah200081]

Hi my name is Sarah. I live in Illinois, about 90 mins straight south of Chicago. On Feb. 23, 2010 I welcomed my daughter into this world (she is my first child)! I received an epideral when I was in labor with her. I was in the hospital from Feb 23 -Feb 25, 2010. I went home with her and everything was great baby and myself were healthy and fine. My husband and I couldn't be happier. About middle or the end of March, both of my eyes were really red. So I had my husband take me to the ER in Kankakee, IL and I saw a nurse practioner (this was the beginning of April 2010). She would NOT come near me she said oh wow you have a really bad case of pink eye! And gave me eurthomycin ( I know I mispelled it the creame ointment ). I followed the directions putting that in my eyes and the redness never cleared up. So after not being able to stand being in the light and wearing sunglasses and having a hard time seeing I made an apointment with Dr. Brent Dunlap ( my eye dr). He said I had a very bad case of iritis in both eyes and he's never seen it this bad before. So he prescribes me Pred and Antropene drops ( I didn't get in to see Dr. Dunlap till the middle of MAY was the soonest I could get in). He also had me go to my regular medical doctor and get all types of blood work and chest x-rays done for the common problems associated with getting iritis (they ran tests for the diseases or illnesses you can have that bring it on based on webmd.com it looked like). My doctor said my Sedrate was elevated, but not by much but she put me on pencilin for 1 year (which I'm not taking every day for a year because my body won't respond well to it if I really need it one day), but then she told me to go see a Rhumetoid Specialist, which I did see Dr. Maria Francis at Riverside in Kankakee, IL. She was great looked at all my lab tests and said I'm fine! And was very informational and said of course your sedrate will be elvated you had a baby not to long ago and sometimes people just get iritis. But the weird thing was I had a rash on my hands that would flare up like eczema it looked like (which my dad has) and would go away and come back, but I took pencilin for like 2 months and it cleared up as well. But anyways, so we did the Pred and dialating drops till about the end of JULY 2010 and was off of them since it cleared up and my vision improved almost back to where it was before I got iritis. So I was able to start wearing contacts again and life was good! End of October 2010 I went to the dentist to have some fillings and he pulled my top wisdom teeth (which had been down and looked like normal teeth for years he said be better to pull them because had to brush them and get cavaties). He gave me laughing gas to relax and also some shots of novacaine in my mouth to numb me up. 3 weeks later sure enough I notice all of the sudden after I took a bath that my vision is hazy in my left eye! So I had pred left over from last time. So I started doing the drops and made an appointment with Dr. Dunlap again! He said yes it came back in my left eye but my right eye is fine! So we do the drops and I see him once a week. He notices something on my macula and has me go to a Retina Specialist which is Dr. Ghandi and his office is in Bourbonnais, IL and also Champaign, IL. I go to him the day before Thanksgiving! He looks in my eye and doesn't see anything with my macula and tells me my lab work looks fine from when my first flare up and some people get idiopathic iritis where it just happens for no apparent reason and sends me on my way. Dec 5th I went back to Dr. Dunlap and he looks in my eye and says well I think it was Macula Edema I saw and it is gone now and it must of cleared up from the last time I saw you to the time you saw Dr. Ghandi since he reported he didn't see it. He said the inflammation in my left eye is almost gone to taper off my eye drops and come back if I notice a flare up again. Well I'm slowly tapering off now. I think my flare ups had something to do with anesthesia ( the epideral when I had my daugher & when I got my wisdom teeth removed) It seems to odd to me to have my flare ups with Iritis start to happen 3 weeks after I received anesthesia! Anyone else have it happen after receiving anesthesia??? Because honestly, I was perfectly healthy during my pregnancy and before I got pregnant! And all my lab work I had done while being pregnant was normal too!

[Mike Bartolatz]

there are many causes of iritis and other forms of uveitis. often individuals have a mild bout of iritis mistakenly diagnosed in childhood as conjunctivitis. when this occurs in women, after the child is born there can be renewed inflammation as the hormone levels return to 'normal'.
if this continues to return, I urge you to go to Chicago and see DR Tessler or Dr Goldstein who are experts in treating uveitis. although your primary care doctor did some tests, the specialists know which ones are important to do. things like the gene HLA B27 for example which predisposes one to uveitis as well as other autoimmune diseases. your skin rash could well be related and you might ask for an evaluation by a dermatologist. it might be that you have plaque psorisis linked to iritis going on. of course this is speculation on my part as I am not a doctor and no one can tell you what you have over the internet. anything that causes inflammation to occur anywhere in your body can trigger renewed inflammation of iritis so things like dental proceedures could trigger renewed inflammation. infections can also trigger uveitis to occur. bouts of GI distress caused by viruses, bacteria etc often trigger first instances of inflammation and if your immune system has certain genetic markers, uveitis can occur as well as many autoimmune disease processes. Sexually transmitted diseases can also trigger uveitis although that is probably not associated with your uveitis so don't take offence for me mentioning this.
contact information for the above specialists can be found at the Ocular Immunology and Uveitis Website: http://www.uveitis.org located in the PATIENT information section of the site on teh USA specialist list.

Please join us in our General discussion forum where I can answer your questions and help you through this.

wishing you the very best,
Mike