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I was terrified of an eyeball injection

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Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#41

Post by valenceelectron »

samstave wrote: post #34
inetsee wrote: post #8

I have diabetes. My glucose control at home is fairly good because almost everything I eat has a nutrition label, and I can calculate somewhat accurately exactly how much insulin I need to take. When I travel, eating in restaurants regularly, I have to make wild ass guesses as to how much carbohydrate I'm consuming. On a recent trip I had some health issues, including a significant spike in my glucose readings. My A1…

>>My A1C went from 6.9 to 8.4 Whats good vs. bad?

Higher is worse. There may be different „schools“ of thought or opinions but according to my doctor 7.5 is a threshold you should not cross (type 1).

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#42

Post by gdebel »

(Ophthalmologist): To any future HN reader scared by those intraocular injections: don't fear them. I'm on my way to the operating room and going to perform cataract surgery under topical (=eyedrops only) anesthesia, as I always do, and as most surgeons today do. Patients won't feel anything except water slightly flowing on the eye surface. The surgical knife is 2.2mm wide : the 25 Gauge needle is 0.260mm wide. Anesthetic eyedrop work amazingly. Patients can actually feel the eye speculum (pro tip: open wide both eyes++, it will be less disturbing) and the itchy feeling of Betadine, and the touch of the needle : that's usually all.

Don't postpone eye injections because of fear: if it is indicated, there is usually some degree of emergency.

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#43

Post by loceng »

draven wrote: post #5

I have a lot of sympathy for the author. I've been thinking about getting LASIK (or SMILE as it seems to be gaining popularity in France) since friend got it and says it's life-changing, and since I've started considering it I sometimes have nightmares about the procedure. I already had some minor surgery with local anesthesic and I didn't have any anxiety, but there's something about having something done to the eye…

Listen to the nightmares - it's your subconscious trying to get a message/warning through to you.

There's a Facebook group called LASIK Complications Support Group that has 3-4 people joining it daily desperate for help from the pain they're left with. LASIK as an industrial complex has done well to suppress the problems. In 2011 one of the FDA expert advisors who voted to approve LASIK wrote a public letter to FDA asking them to immediately recall LASIK, as he said there was data they were ignoring that they shouldn't have been ignoring, and that it should never have been approved.

A story of suicide post LASIK (actually specifically she did "SMILE") of a news reporter Jessica Starr - many articles on her, but here's two: https://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/families-deal-with-repercussions-a... + https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/in-her-own-words-jessica-st...:

""She looked at me and she said, 'Dan [her husband], it's like my eyes and my brain aren't communicating like they used to. I can't process like I used to. I'm not visualizing things like I used to,'" Dan said.'

My hypothesis is that the more creative and sensitive a person is (therefore less redundancy in neural networks) the more fragile and detrimental damage/injury caused by LASIK.

The cornea is the most sensitive tissue in the body with 300-600 times the density of pain receptors than your skin, and LASIK lies - your cornea doesn't/can't heal on its own.

At least wait until the stromal stem cell treatment available clinically. Human clinical trials in India were fast tracked under compassionate grounds, the original research on animal models from University of Pittsburgh, that were highly successful healing/regenerating deep/severe scarring and chemical burns. It'll likely take anywhere from 2-5 years, with the pandemic delaying things, for it to be available in India/US with FDA approval.

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#44

Post by inetsee »

samstave wrote: post #34
inetsee wrote: post #8

I have diabetes. My glucose control at home is fairly good because almost everything I eat has a nutrition label, and I can calculate somewhat accurately exactly how much insulin I need to take. When I travel, eating in restaurants regularly, I have to make wild ass guesses as to how much carbohydrate I'm consuming. On a recent trip I had some health issues, including a significant spike in my glucose readings. My A1…

>>My A1C went from 6.9 to 8.4 Whats good vs. bad?

The [A1C] goal for most people with diabetes is 7% or less. [1]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/managing/managing-blood-sugar/a...

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#45

Post by loceng »

at_a_remove wrote: post #29
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure you understand the clinical outcomes and potential side-effects. When a cornea flap is cut, you are cutting a lot of innervation to the cornea surface, this for many people means fairly persistent dry-eyes. In addition the scaring of the cornea in the incision flap rim, can also create visual artefacts like Halos, more visible during nightime as your pupil expands and may catch some of the visual distortion…

I was talking to my eye doc while he was performing surgery on my eyelids, just sort of chit-chatting. So I was curious, my eyesight is pretty good -- but for how long? -- and I asked, "What do you think of LASIK?" Now, this guy has a dry sense of humor so he said, "You may notice that I'm wearing glasses ..." And I guess that was all of the input I needed.

There are photos floating around of the doctors attending LASIK conferences, where 50%+ of doctors are wearing glasses.

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#46

Post by justasidenote2 »

I've been Type 1 diabetic for 10 years. Even though my glucose control is excellent over that period (A1C never >6.5%) I've never been able to shake the latent fear that it's a matter of time before I develop complications like retinopathy. What sucks hard is that it's not _just_ determined by insulin and glucose. Exercise, stress, activity level, protein/fat intake, illness, and more can all cause massive variability in glucose levels and insulin sensitivity. Therefore my most successful blanket strategy for glucose control is keeping as consistent a routine as possible: eating the same foods, doing the same activities - at the same time, always exercising regularly, and avoiding spontaneity.

While I've always had anxiety, it's only become worse over the years given the fear of having issues in both day-to-day blood sugar management and in being diagnosed with long term complications. Living with T1D often feels like a case study in applied stoicism.

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#47

Post by elzbardico »

globular-toast wrote: post #21

When I was a child I used to sometimes touch my eyeball with the tip of a pencil. Everyone I've told this to is very freaked out by it. For me it was a test of my own self control. Could I keep my eye open? Could I be steady enough to not stab my eye? You can't really see the pencil approaching in any detail. It's really out of focus. The eyeball itself doesn't really feel much. The key is not hitting your eyelashes…

> When I was a child I used to sometimes touch my eyeball with the tip of a pencil

I really fear you.

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#48

Post by smnrchrds »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #16
draven wrote: post #5

I have a lot of sympathy for the author. I've been thinking about getting LASIK (or SMILE as it seems to be gaining popularity in France) since friend got it and says it's life-changing, and since I've started considering it I sometimes have nightmares about the procedure. I already had some minor surgery with local anesthesic and I didn't have any anxiety, but there's something about having something done to the eye…

Make sure you understand the clinical outcomes and potential side-effects. When a cornea flap is cut, you are cutting a lot of innervation to the cornea surface, this for many people means fairly persistent dry-eyes. In addition the scaring of the cornea in the incision flap rim, can also create visual artefacts like Halos, more visible during nightime as your pupil expands and may catch some of the visual distortion…

NYT had a good article about this:
His eyes are so dry and sore that he puts drops in every half-hour; sometimes they burn “like when you’re chopping onions.” His night vision is so poor that going out after dark is treacherous.

But Mr. Ramirez says that as far as his surgeon is concerned, he is a success story.

“My vision is considered 20/20, because I see the A’s, B’s and C’s all the way down the chart,” said Mr. Ramirez. “But I see three A’s, three B’s, three C’s.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/well/lasik-complications-...

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#49

Post by loceng »

draven wrote: post #22
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure you understand the clinical outcomes and potential side-effects. When a cornea flap is cut, you are cutting a lot of innervation to the cornea surface, this for many people means fairly persistent dry-eyes. In addition the scaring of the cornea in the incision flap rim, can also create visual artefacts like Halos, more visible during nightime as your pupil expands and may catch some of the visual distortion…

As I understand it SMILE implies a smaller cut (3mm) with less nerve damage. Thanks for the heads-up, I'll make sure I'm OK with the potential side effects if I go forward with it.

Look up central sensitization and hyperalgesia, a side effect LASIK only recently admitted to, and to which LASIK caused me and has made my life hell - and why I know about Jessica Starr, the Facebook support group, and the stromal stem cell research - all things I had to find on my own as the industry is protecting itself, indoctrinated and with no real interest in helping those they harm except for billing you to treat the purposefully mislabeled "dry eye syndrome" - where research not done by LASIK shows up to 40% of people have permanent problems after.

Re: I was terrified of an eyeball injection

#50

Post by pjerem »

fernandotakai wrote: post #17
nickthemagicman wrote: post #3

I couldn't even finish reading the article, the prospect sounded so horrifying. This author is a king.

same. i can't even wear contacts -- i tried but it felt soooo bad! my wife, on the other hand, is a fucking champ when it comes to anything eye related. she has keratoconus[0] and not only she has to do a ton of eye exams every year, but she has to wear rigid contact lenses whenever she's awake. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratoconus

I'm probably not the first person to say it to you but the "fear" to put contact lenses fades very quickly. Maybe not the very first time, but from the second or the third time, you'll stop to think about it for ever.

> it felt soooo bad!

It shouldn't. You are not even supposed to feel them, in fact, some people fall asleep with them even if they know they shouldn't. If you suffered, even if it was your first try, it's probably due to presence of dust between your lens and your eye, and I agree that this is super painful. But that's not the normal sensation, and that's not an issue as long as you remove the lens and retry after some cleaning.

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