Eye spy with my little Iritis
Hi there,
Anyone who has a chronic illness knows that there are complications that come with it. And when it comes to a disease that causes a lot of inflammation, you better expect that it's not just going to quarantine itself to a very specific part of your body, like an elbow for instance. No.... unfortunately, it will share its lovely flaring inflammation with other parts of your body, like your other elbow or an organ. For me, that means my eyes. I have arthritis and inflammation in my eyeballs. Yay.
Anyone who has a chronic illness knows that there are complications that come with it. And when it comes to a disease that causes a lot of inflammation, you better expect that it's not just going to quarantine itself to a very specific part of your body, like an elbow for instance. No.... unfortunately, it will share its lovely flaring inflammation with other parts of your body, like your other elbow or an organ. For me, that means my eyes. I have arthritis and inflammation in my eyeballs. Yay.
Okay so in all truth, this inflammation, called Iritis, is how I actually what lead me to receive a spondylitis diagnosis. I had a flare up in my right eye which allowed for the right doctor to ask the right question, and BOOM! I got a referral to my rheumatologist who put the puzzle pieces together. Hello Spondylitis. And up until recently I had a occasional occurrence of this iritis. Maybe one or two times a year. And always it happened in my right eye. Well I have gotten it a bit more often recently. Like every couple of months. Which just kinda sucks.
So, what is this iritis thing that I am talking about. Well, as I said before it is an arthritic type inflammation of the eye. Often times it makes your eyes pink or red depending on the severity. For me I get a distinct discomfort/ pain above my iris that kinda feels like someone is pressing on your eye with a finger, which ends up being one of my first indicators before I get the redness. The other main one is photosensitivity. No, it doesnt mean I am afraid of taking pics. It means that light hurts. A lot. Feels like the sun is stabbing me in the eyeball with a pencil, a lot. Not fun. And if left untreated for too long it can cause either temporary or permanent vision loss. To treat this I have to put prednisone eye drops in my eye on a certain schedule and taper off of them over the course of a few weeks. That is if the eye, or in my case, eyes respond to the treatment.
Every time I have ever had an iritis flare it has always been in one eye. My right eye. Well apparently my body wanted to be all balanced or something and decided to have inflammation in my left eye too. It flared up the same day I was going in to get my right eye all checked out so it wasn't bad. We caught it early and could treat it right away which was great. All was going well, both eyes seemed to be clearing up pretty well. Until a few days ago. Suddenly, my left eye decided to go nuts with inflammation. Pain. Watering. Redness. Blurred vision like I was looking through a shower door with a ton of fog. Back to the doctors I went and come to find out that because the amount of inflammation in my eye, I was not only having trouble seeing clearly through it but my pupil was stuck. (Apparently that can happen.) So, I was put on dilation drops and back to square one with the prednisone drops every other hour.
If you have never experienced the pleasure of dilation drops, I'll give you some insight. Dilation drops kinda sting. Not too bad, but they aren't exactly comfy. They open your pupil up and prevent it from contracting and opening through the day. In my case, we are trying to get my pupil to open. And so far, a part of my pupil is dilating while the other part is stuck. So my eye looks like a horror film of a misshapen pupil and iris at the moment. Mind you, I am getting some hilarious looks from people. Because, let's face it, I am not going to put my day to day activities on hold because of this.
Such is life with chronic illness. What a way to start off summer!
Nikki De
Every time I have ever had an iritis flare it has always been in one eye. My right eye. Well apparently my body wanted to be all balanced or something and decided to have inflammation in my left eye too. It flared up the same day I was going in to get my right eye all checked out so it wasn't bad. We caught it early and could treat it right away which was great. All was going well, both eyes seemed to be clearing up pretty well. Until a few days ago. Suddenly, my left eye decided to go nuts with inflammation. Pain. Watering. Redness. Blurred vision like I was looking through a shower door with a ton of fog. Back to the doctors I went and come to find out that because the amount of inflammation in my eye, I was not only having trouble seeing clearly through it but my pupil was stuck. (Apparently that can happen.) So, I was put on dilation drops and back to square one with the prednisone drops every other hour.
If you have never experienced the pleasure of dilation drops, I'll give you some insight. Dilation drops kinda sting. Not too bad, but they aren't exactly comfy. They open your pupil up and prevent it from contracting and opening through the day. In my case, we are trying to get my pupil to open. And so far, a part of my pupil is dilating while the other part is stuck. So my eye looks like a horror film of a misshapen pupil and iris at the moment. Mind you, I am getting some hilarious looks from people. Because, let's face it, I am not going to put my day to day activities on hold because of this.
Such is life with chronic illness. What a way to start off summer!
Nikki De
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