Hello again! We’ve talked about vision awareness and the importance of regular checkups and screenings, especially if you have been diagnosed with diabetes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, people with diabetes are at higher risk of vision loss and eye diseases, including retinopathy, glaucoma and cataracts. I can’t stress this enough, please don’t ever take your vision for granted. To emphasize that point, I’m going to share a personal story about a vision issue that affected my wife. We both get regular checkups and screenings for our eyes, but we never saw this coming. It was a Friday morning, and the wife woke up with a goopy eye that was noticeably pink. She was proactive and called the Dr and scheduled an appointment immediately. In hindsight, we were so grateful that she did She was seen and the Dr. identified it was pink eye and gave her some drops to treat it. Usually, with pink eye, that would be the end of the story…. however, it wasn’t. My wife woke up on Sunday morning and couldn’t see out of that eye! You can imagine how scared we both were! We went to the ED where she was seen by an ophthalmologist at the hospital. It turns out it wasn’t pink eye, but some sort of virus (they’re still not sure of the strain) that caused a corneal ulcer on her eye. Because it was caught early, my wife still has vision in that eye. My wife is very diligent about cleaning her contacts and never sleeping with them in. The Dr. advised that there was a myriad of things that could’ve caused the ulcer and noted that most of the time, an ulcer like she had will cause permanent blindness. It has been a long road to recovery, and my wife will probably never be able to wear contacts again. It’s glasses and special sunglasses only from now on! The ulcer did leave some scarring on her eye, but she still has her vision! My wife was very lucky to retain her vision, don’t trust your vision to luck. If you have diabetes, be proactive with checkups and screenings, and never ignore any warning signs your body is trying to tell you! Good Health & Vision to us all!
Thank you,
Sincerely Ron