My Eyes

I had my first ophthalmologist appointment over the summer which I wrote about. What I didn’t write about is that I was told to wear vision correction, given a slip with my prescription and sent on my way – into very bright light.

I’ve never ordered glasses on my own and with not needing full time correction in the past, I didn’t have a clue how to order contacts. Everyone I know who wears them has had an optometrist’s office to help walk them through, get trials and order glasses. I felt a little lost. When I finally decided (and set a deadline) for getting started with contacts, a very nice lady at my ophthalmologist’s office explained the process to me, but I opted to schedule a contact fitting appointment at Costco’s optical department since I’ll be ordering contacts from there.

In August, I was pronounced complication-free in my eyes. At my fitting last week, the optometrist discovered a bleed in one of my eyes. He didn’t even have to dilate my eyes to see it.

I’m sure that a lot of people will tell me that one bleed isn’t terrible and honestly I can’t do a lot about it that I’m not already doing (like consciously trying to manage blood sugar levels). It’s just disheartening that after only 16 months, I’m experiencing a “complication” of diabetes.

Since the find, I started reading more in-depth on diabetic eye complications and I’ve been completely freaked out. Chalk that up to more motivation to get graphs like this one:

One thing that really impressed me though is that the doctor who found the bleed is sending the information from my exam to my ophthalmologist’s office so that it can be tracked in my chart.

Note added 12/12/12: On my follow-up visit today, my bleed appeared to be a third the size that it was on Friday meaning that my eye is healing itself fairly quickly.