How We Spent Fathers' Day - A Brief Encounter With Glaucoma

I was just lamenting last week that how fragile life is. An ex-colleague of mine who was the same age as me collapsed in her house suddenly and died of Brain Aneurysm. A day later, my cousin 10 years my senior died suddenly from heart attack without prior medical history. I asked myself, if the same thing happened to me or my loved ones, am I ready to meet the Lord or ready to part with my loved ones.

As Murphy's Law states, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. On 19th June, I woke up with a blur vision on my right eye. The blur-ness was like a foggy piece of shield covering my eye. It was very even. As anyone would, I waited to observe, to see if it would get better, worse or status quo. I went to church as usual, went exercising as usual, but it didn’t get better.  By evening, the tension on right eye started to build up, I felt mild pain from my head ,down to my cheek and upper jaw. Common sense told me something wasn’t right. My heart was palpitating fast. I couldn’t sit, stand, even breath well. It seems right to visit a doctor, perhaps visiting a hospital A&E. But it was a Sunday, how could there be any specialist, I asked myself. I decided to call my medical friend and told him all my symptoms. His advice was to see a doctor immediately because it got to do with my vision, and he reassured me that there would be specialist on standby to be called back. 

With that assurance, I walked to the nearest hospital alone, which was about 10mins walk from home. It was nearing my boy's bedtime, so I didn’t want the whole family to come along. Throughout the episode, I was all alone, but my Lord was with me.

When on-call eye specialist saw me, he diagnosed it as Acute Angle Eye Closure Glaucoma. He said I must be admitted because it was an emergency case. Eye drop must be applied on my eye hourly to bring down the high pressure. So I admitted alone. And that was how we spent Fathers’ Day, the boys were at home sleeping together, and me alone on the hospital bed. Throughout the night, the nurse-on-shift came in hourly to apply eye drop on me. I vomited 4-5 times throughout the night as I was feeling nausea, even though I didn’t eat my dinner. Every time the eye drop applied on me, I experienced total black-out on my right eye, which scared the hell out of me. Vision only slowly came back after about 10 minutes, the nurse said that was the effect of the medicine. At dawn, my eye pressure dropped significantly, I could see much better, though still blur.

Alone, yet not alone

For those who don’t know what is Closed-Angle Glaucoma, according to Wikipedia:

Closed-angle glaucoma can present gradually or suddenly. The sudden presentation may involve severe eye pain, blurred vision, mid-dilated pupil, redness of the eye, and nausea.  Vision loss from glaucoma, once it has occurred, is permanent. But, if it is treated early, it is possible to slow or stop the progression of disease with medication, laser treatment, or surgery. Treatment of closed-angle glaucoma is a medical emergency. It occurs more commonly among older people and more commonly in women. Worldwide, glaucoma is the second-leading cause of blindness after cataracts. 

The eye specialist said that I am his youngest patient in his 25 yrs of medical practice. The previous youngest one was 44. Well …

My blood pressure shot up to 186 when I was admitted but came down to normal when discharged

So this morning, I did safety key-hole laser treatment on both eyes (the other eye was done as preventive measure). The doctor said thankfully I saw him yesterday, because if it was treated late, vision could be lost. How could I not be thankful to the Lord? 

I am now back home but I have to be observed for 2 days on out-patient basis. If there is no improvement, the doctor may have to perform cataract surgery to remove my lens and replace with artificial lens. I covet your prayer.