My vision

Right now, my vision is the biggest medical problem that I am fighting.

Over the past year, I have had a lot of medical issues, all of them stemming from long-term diabetes.  For the past couple of years, I have gotten my diabetes in good control (excellent control over the past year) but the damage had already been done to my body by the time I got control over the disease.  I did not know I had the problems, they started popping up later after I thought I had avoided them.  Long-term diabetes can do terrible things to your body, so if you are diabetic, take control over it!  I wish I did so many years ago!

A little over a year ago, in January 2016, one morning I woke up in the morning and could see hundreds of blood vessels in my eye.  I am not saying I saw them in the mirror, what I mean is that when I looked through my eyes, I could see the items in front of me, but also blood vessels floating around.  It was pretty scary.

I was telling Feyma, my wife, today that I wished that I could put a camera inside my head and show her the vision through my eyeballs so that she would understand more clearly what I am dealing with.  I looked on Google images and found some good pictures that I shared with her, and I will share with you too.

I have two eye conditions. My first condition is called Diabetic Retinopathy.  That is, as the name implies, caused by my long-term diabetes.  Below this paragraph is a picture of what my vision looks like due to the retinopathy. These spots vary between being black or bright red, and cover sometimes as little as 10% of my vision, and at other times as much as 90% of the vision. This condition which is treated by laser, which I had done extensively last year.

The second condition that I have is called Wet Macular Degeneration (WMD).  That is caused by Diabetic Retinopathy.  The WMD is mostly in my left eye, but I think it is starting in my right eye, and that is what the doctor is looking for in some tests that she ordered recently.  This condition is treated with the injection of a drug called Avastin into the eyeball.  Since January, I have had Avastin injected into my left eyeball twice. The first time I got some great results and hoped for more improvement in the second round.  Unfortunately, the second time yielded really no improvement.  This can cover up to 75% of my field of vision at times.

Last week I went to my eye doctor.  Her name is Dr. Sy, and she is a Retina Specialist.  She is considered one of the top retina specialists in the Philippines, and I just love her. She is a very good doctor. While I was at the doctor, my right eye started bleeding inside, leaving my vision clouded by an eyeball filled with blood.  I hate for that to happen (it happens from time to time, it is part of the retinopathy), so I am used to it. But, having it happen while I was at the doctor gave her a chance to examine it more closely to see what exactly is going on, and where the blood was leaking from. She determined that the blood was leaking from an area where the laser could not reach, and it is possible that I may need eye surgery on that eyeball that involved actually cutting into the eye, which is a bit scary!  Doing laser or the injections directly into the eyeball are also considered surgery, but so far I have not experienced having a scalpel anywhere near my eyeball!  I guess you gotta do what needs to be done, though.

One of my greatest wishes is that I found out about the Ketogenic diet a long time ago, while my diabetes was still relatively fresh.  Now that I have been diabetic for 25 years, the damage is done to my body, I am glad that I have it under control and stop the damage from getting worse.  If I only knew 25 years ago though…

So, anyway, I just wanted to share what is going on with my eyes.  I hope we can get this cleared up and get my vision back to being as good as is possible sometime this year!