By Carol A. Cates, MSN, MBA, RN
Chief Nursing Officer
Odessa Regional Medical Center
Over the course of my marriage, I have learned more about eyes than I ever really wanted to know. My husband was born with a condition called keratoconus. With keratoconus, as a person ages, their corneas get thinner and thinner and shaped more like the end of a football. If untreated, those corneas can get so thin that they rupture, and the person can be blinded.
The treatment for keratoconus is corneal transplants. My husband had both of his corneas transplanted in his late teens/early 20’s. Fast forward a few years, and my husband was working with a grinder and had a piece of metal fly up into one of his eyes. It scarred one of the transplanted corneas badly, but looking at risk/benefit, the doctors decided not to re-transplant that cornea at the time.
Fast forward many more years, and my husband was in an accident that caused his “good eye” to rupture. Nine surgeries later, despite Herculean efforts, the eye specialists were unable to save his eye. He is healing from a re-transplant of the scarred cornea, and we are hopeful it will improve his vision once he is fully healed.
During this process, while not technically blind, my husband has been severely visually handicapped. Yet, despite this limitation, my husband continues to go to work every day and teach.
Part of the reason, I think is because one of his closest friends, also a teacher, is blind. This friend showed my husband that a visual handicap does not need to be a limitation. That friend is blind because of glaucoma.
While there is no cure for glaucoma, there are treatments to manage glaucoma. That means if it is caught early, damage can be kept to a minimum and blindness can be prevented. That is why it is so important to make sure people are aware of Glaucoma, and it is a national health observance in January.
Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that left untreated can cause vision loss and blindness by damaging the optic nerve. One of the biggest problems of glaucoma is the symptoms start so gradually, most people don’t notice them until there is severe damage.
The first symptom is generally loss of peripheral vision, particularly the part of vision that is closest to the nose. If glaucoma goes untreated, it can cause blindness. One type of glaucoma, angle-closure glaucoma can have sudden symptoms: intense eye pain, nausea, red eye, and/or blurry vision. If you have any of those symptoms, seek treatment by going to your eye doctor or an emergency room right away.
The most common cause of glaucoma in the U.S. is called open-angle glaucoma. But there are other types of glaucoma: normal-tension glaucoma, angle-closure glaucoma (also called narrow-angle or acute glaucoma), congenital glaucoma, neovascular glaucoma, pigmentary glaucoma, exfoliation glaucoma, and uveitic glaucoma.
You can learn more about the types of glaucoma on the national eye institutes webpage at tinyurl.com/yfju4jbr.
Anyone, even kids, can get glaucoma, but people at highest risk are people over age 60, especially if they have a Latino heritage, African American heritage and over age 40, or you have a family history of glaucoma.
If you are at risk, the National Eye Institute recommends you get a comprehensive dilated eye exam every one to two years. Most common types of glaucoma are caused by high eye pressures.
If you, like me, hate the “air puff” test that measures eye pressure, you will be happy to know there are now newer technologies that can measure eye pressure during your annual exam that are much less uncomfortable.
There are several different treatments for glaucoma, depending on the type of glaucoma you have. They can include medications, which are usually eye drops, laser treatments, and surgery. The most important thing with glaucoma treatment is that it gets started quickly. Treatment can’t undo the damage that has already been done, but it can stop glaucoma from getting worse.
The biggest lesson I have learned with my husband and his crazy history of eye conditions and eye injuries, is that vision is incredibly precious. More precious than I can really express. Vision can also be quite fragile. And with something like glaucoma, if you don’t seek preventative care by visiting an eye doctor regularly, that fragility means you could lose much of your vision before you even know it’s happening.
Please remember this January to protect your vision by seeing an eye doctor regularly.
