*Brian Regan voice* “ARE THESE MY GLASSES??!?!?!?!”
I got my new fancy-shmancy “your eyes are wonky so here are some prisms” glasses!
I guess it’s kind of dumb to blog about these today because I’ll probably take a while to get used to them, but I’ve got them on and am ready for the magic.
Update 1: my depth perception is whacked out. At least for far away things.
Update 2: after using my computer and doing stuff like my French lessons on my phone, I am noticing that the text isn’t jittering around like it used to. Which is nice.
Update 3: I haven’t had a headache (except for a weather headache due to major pressure changes) since I’ve started wearing these.
Update 4: I read in the car for FIVE MINUTES and only got slightly nauseous. I can usually only stand a few seconds before I want to puke.
Update 5: depth perception is still a little wonky, but I think it’s getting better.
Claudia versus…Eyesight? I Guess?
So it turns out my EYES ARE WONKY.
Story time:
Nate and I went to the eye doctor today because it’s been like three years since we last went and he needs new frames. I figured I had no change in my prescription because last time the change was miniscule (my eyesight actually improved (??) but there was not enough of a change to warrant a new prescription) but I went anyway just because.
They do the eye exam and, as expected, no change at all. Then the eye doctor asks me two questions:
“Do you frequently get headaches?”
“Do you experience motion sickness?”
My answer to both of those questions was yes. I get frequent low-level headaches (which I’ve always assumed was just due to the wacky weather here) and I have very bad motion sickness, especially when trying to read in the car.
So he goes “interesting” and I think what do you mean ‘interesting????’ and he takes me into a different room to conduct further tests.
The “further tests” involve wearing a VR headset and having to focus on a little yellow dot while a bunch of other stuff was going on in the VR world. After the test was done they show me through the VR headset that my eyes don’t freaking point in the same direction and it messes with my focus (apparently I was very close to the upper threshold of misalignment that the test could measure, so that’s great). I’m focusing beyond what I need to focus on, especially when I’m looking at something up close. This causes double vision and consequently makes my brain continuously compensate for said double vision. This causes the headaches and the motion sickness, among other things.
So the eye doctor said that they have this thing called Neurolens, which is some sort of progressive prism lens that’s really supposed to help with this. They’re expensive, but he said that he’s had quite a few patients who tried them out and not one has asked for a refund after the 30-day trial.
I did some reading about them and it sounds like a lot of people really do benefit from them.
So I’m going to give them a try. It’d be nice not to have near-daily headaches and to be able to read in the car for more than 30 seconds before feeling nauseous.
We’ll see! I’ll let y’all know, even though I’m sure no one cares.
Better Jazzy News
So in contrast to the phenomenally awful Jazzy news we got yesterday, we actually had some good news about her eye today. Namely, it’s responding to the medicine and the eye pressure has decreased back into the “normal” range. It’s at the high end of normal, yes, but still normal. Nate and I were both worried that it wouldn’t be responding at all like her other eye and they’d have to remove that one as well.
And that’s the LAST thing she needs right now.
Anyway, sorry for the short blog. I’m still really upset about yesterday’s news.
The Jazz
So our sweet kitty is having eye issues. Back on November 27 (a Friday), I was playing with her by throwing her toy mouse at her as she sat in my chair, and I noticed in the sunlight that her left eye was blurry and her pupil was fairly dilated. Pic:
This was the first time I noticed it, so I told Nate about it when he got home and we decided to call our vet. Jazzy was just getting over pink eye in her right eye, which we had been giving her an ointment for. We figured that maybe whatever was going on with her left eye was its manifestation of pink eye as well. The vet said we could either take her to an emergency vet that was open 24/7 or we could try giving her the pink eye ointment in the left eye for a few days and see if that helped clear things up.
Speaking from hindsight, we should have probably taken her to the emergency vet. However, she was not acting any different than normal (like, not at all different. Still purring, flopping, playing, zooming around the house, eating, drinking, etc.) and wasn’t acting like she was in pain. We also were hesitant to take her to the emergency vet because a) she stresses like crazy when we put her in her carrier; b) the vet she would see would not be her usual vet and thus might stress her out more; c) at this point it was like 7 PM on a Friday evening and the emergency vet would probably just end up keeping her overnight or maybe even over the weekend – which would stress her out even more. So we went with the ointment.
But by that Monday, there didn’t appear to be much of a change in her eye, so we took her to our regular vet once we were able to get an appointment. She didn’t have the equipment to do a thorough eye exam, but again recommended the emergency vet because they did have an ophthalmologist that could take a look at her. So we took her there today.
They measured the pressure in both of her eyes and found it was elevated in both of them but more so in the left one. The ophthalmologist thought this increased pressure might be due to some inflammation they found in her eyes, so they gave us a bunch of eye drop meds (which she hates, oh my god) and we’re going to give her those until next Thursday when we take her back for a follow-up.
If she responds to the meds it’s likely they’ll just have us give her those for a while until things clear up, but if not, they talked about the possibility of having to remove her left eye, as the increased pressure causes pain and, if caused by glaucoma, will eventually cause her to go blind anyway.
So hopefully she’ll respond to the meds. It’s basically all we can do at this point.
Poor sweet girl.
Green? Blue? Grue?
My eyes are pretty unremarkable, color-wise. But they do seem to change their main color(s) over the years. They used to be super brown, then super green. Now they seem to be trending towards blue, especially if you look at them in the sunlight. Example:
There’s always that brown ring around my pupil, but as you move further out, that’s definitely a blue-ish color.
Weird.
TWSB: And here’s some eye surgery to creep you out for the rest of your life
WARNING: not for the squeamish! Turn back now and don’t watch the video I link to if eye surgery/surgery in general/eye stabbing/stabbing in general grosses you out or offends you. You’ve been warned!
Anyway, I had no idea this was a thing: an iridectomy is a procedure where surgeons go into a person’s eye and remove part of the iris (the colored ring around the pupil). According to Wikipedia, it’s most commonly performed in the treatment of glaucoma and iris melanoma. Sector iridectomis leave patients with something known as a keyhole pupil, which looks like this:
Total iridectomies, as you would guess, leave patients with NO iris and a GIANT pupil.
This stuff is freaky to me.
In order to freak everyone else out, I found a video of doctors performing a peripheral iridectomy. Again, don’t watch if needles in eyes freaks you out.
I like how they have to waterjet the iris back into the eye.
Actually, I’m surprised at how little info there is on this procedure, at least on the internet. I would think freaky eye stuff would get a lot of attention.
Okay, that’s all.
New Camera + Photoshop = FUN!
Alternate title: “Claudia’s Photoshop Skills are Nearly as Poor as Her Flash Skills”
Today’s lesson: eyes
Ingredients:
1 camera
1 pair of eyes
1 copy of Photoshop
A computer helps, too
Normal. Boring, huh?
I wished my eyes really looked like this, cause this is sexy.
They say large pupils are indicative of arousal.
Now this is cool. Just lightened them a bit.
Pupil mitosis!!! The only one that required a slight bit of skill.
Tell me which one you liked best! Claudia loves feedback.
Too sick to samba
Ugh…I feel like crap today. There’s basically not much more than this to say. My eyes hurt. Well, technically, I guess it’s my eyelids that hurt. My head hurts. I’m really shaky. I’m seeing spots. Blah.
Eigenblogger 