Monday, March 20, 2017

Where to go from here?

I took a week medical leave from work to work out if I can hold a job with my new visual disability. I noticed my reading ability has been hampered. It takes me longer to read now and I already was a slow ready because of dyslexia and my damaged left eye. Add in the scotoma maculopathy of my right eye and reading is a bit grueling.
It's like having a chip in middle of one of the lenses in your glasses. Yeah, it's annoying, but you can see around it and, in general, you can ignore it. Until, you need to see things in detail like reading. Then that small chip, that was so easy to ignore before, becomes prominent. The difference is, with a chip in your glasses as you move your eye past it you can see. My "chip" follows every where I look. It seems to get in the way of the first letter of every word. If the font is big enough my brain can fill in what the word is, but that takes extra time and energy. It's exhausting if done for a long period of time. Can I manage a job with this new hindrance? I honestly, don't know. I've been praying a lot and have been prayed for by others. Can work accommodate for this? Is there even a way to accommodate for this?

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

I'll never see things the same way again.

Since Sunday I've been struggling with what I thought was a visual aura.  But, as days past and the aura wasn't going away and I never got a migraine my neurologist was worried that is was something more serious and wanted me to see an ophthalmologist asap.

So They put me through a bunch of test. Some before dilating my pupils and some after.
Sam says I look creepy with dilated pupils.

The conclusion? I have a lesions in my eye. Let me try and break this down.

This is a picture of my left eye. Sure, it has it's problems, like a lazy eye and astigmatism but it doesn't have a lesion. 

Now, here is a picture of my right eye with it's new fancy lesion. Can you see the difference? It has a dip. That is bad. That is what is causing my vision problems.

Here is another view for a different test. This one is a little harder to see. Where the arrow is it should be a darker pink perfectly circular area. If you notice, it has this lighter pink area with a tint of orange chunk in it. That is the lesion.
Such a small thing to cause so much trouble.

According to the ophthalmologist, this new development has nothing to do with MS. My doctor said I was just that lucky. Yes, she said that. Also, there is a pretty good chance that this is permanent. They scheduled me to see a retina specialist in April to see of there are any changes and to run more tests.

This thing makes reading difficult. My job is to read a computer screen. Even if it is for only 4 hours, it's exhausting and I don't know if I can do it everyday. I got a letter to excuse me from work for the next week, but then what? My doctor said I may just get used to it. I pray that it will either go away or I will be able to work around it.  Only time will tell.