razzberry

I wasn’t sure I was going to post this, but decided I should. The main reason being that I want to remind my friends to go to the doctor. This is another long post, so buckle up if you plan to read this.

On Monday, I saw an eye doctor about severe pain in my left eye, vision loss, and sudden and very bad headaches for over a week. He diagnosed me with edema due to my job and sent me home with eye drops. After 3 days, I felt no change and called that office again, asking if there was a second doc I could see. I was able to get in the next day (Friday morning) for the same symptoms, only this other doctor ordered a battery of tests. I was then referred to another eye doctor who ran more tests and then sent me to the ER to get an MRI.

Lots of big scary words were used by the eye docs to describe what I might have, but in the end the MRI concluded that none of those big scary words could be applied to my condition. I have severe inflammation of my optic nerve, and while they cannot yet explain what caused it, they can prescribe a treatment to fix it.

This all started at 8:30am Friday morning and ended 10:00pm Friday night.

Side note: Norton Brownsboro is where I ended my day. The eye doctor preferred I go to that one due to the number of neurologists they have on staff. They also have the absolute nicest nurses and doctors (and an MRI technician named Aaron who was absolutely hilarious and made my experience a lot less scary).

So, there are some things I’ve learned from this experience:

1. Go to the doctor. None of us do this enough (me included) and my experience was definitely a wake up call.
2. If something feels different and you don’t know why, ask. It’s better to be proactive than reactive (ounce of prevention and all that).
3. Don’t be afraid to request a second opinion. Doctors want to help, and while they do amazing work, they are human. I had two doctors with two possible diagnoses, but the second referred me to a specialist who sent me to get an MRI. Without that, I would still be sitting here days later putting these useless eye drops in my eyes waiting for the pain to go away.