Insight For Your Eyesight: Winning The Battle Against Glaucoma

By Kendra Bobowick

Sandra Morici’s experience was sudden.

“About a year and a half ago I was reading and I noticed a dark shadow appear in part of my vision,” she said. “I was worried. I didn’t know what it was.”

She ran to the eye doctor, and at age 59, had her first encounter with glaucoma, an eye disease affecting many adults 50-plus years old, especially African Americans.

Glaucoma also mainly affects those with diabetes, those who are nearsighted, or who have had damage to the eye. Specifically, glaucoma is a result of normal eye fluid build-up, causing pressure in the eye and eventually damaging the optic nerve. Glaucoma results in vision loss and blindness if not treated.

Ms Morici was frightened of losing her eyesight, saying, “I really have concerns about eyes. When my daughter had an accident in high school she almost lost an eye, and I have always been conscious of eyesight. You can’t do without it.”

For Ms Morici, the experience was “from out of the blue,” and she began treatments right away, she said.

Normally, various eye drops are used to reduce pressure in the eye. But Ms Morici was not a normal case.

“I was having allergic reactions to drops, and finally found one that worked,” she said. Although effective, this particular drop “did not reduce the pressure enough,” she said.

Her next step was a specialist; laser surgery was the looming suggestion for reducing Ms Morici’s fluid pressure.

According to SeniorHealth.com, one of many websites discussing glaucoma, “If the eye drops are not effective, a new laser surgery can be done which helps to open the drainage system for the fluid and help reduce the pressure.”

“When I learned I needed laser surgery, I had the doctor double-checked,” Ms Morici said. “I didn’t want anyone touching my eyes.” She wanted someone she could trust completely.

Now, Ms Morici assesses her specialist, Bruce Altman, with Danbury Eye Physicians & Surgeons PC, as “top of the line.”

Dr Altman also tried drops and eventually the laser surgery, said Ms Morici.

“But it didn’t have lasting effects,” she said.

When she was initially diagnosed, Ms Morici said, “They told me about the drops and that I would have to use them for the rest of my life, and I thought, ‘All right, that’s not too big a deal.’”

Yet each turn of events since her first doctor’s visit presented progressively daunting prospects. “Little did I know what I was up against,” she said.

When she learned about her laser surgery, Ms Morici recalls thinking, “OK, it will be in an office, it can’t be that bad.”

She feels she was able to handle each stage of her treatment because, “at each step, I thought it would be the last thing.”  Her situation was dire, however.

“The doctor said the surgery was a serious operation,” Ms Morici said. Creating even greater apprehension was the procedure.

“The doctor said I would be awake [during surgery] and that’s when I just dropped dead,” she said. “I learned that you’re put into a twilight state. I was really troubled by this.”

Her doctor would need Ms Morici to communicate with him and indicate any discomfort during the surgery, although he stressed that she was not to move, she said.

Before the procedure took place, she “did come to terms with it, but it wasn’t easy,” she said.

Once the twilight state was induced, Ms Morici said she “could see fingers and needles” moving toward her eye, and without moving or speaking, Ms Morici explained that she made a plaintive sound to alert her doctor to any discomfort.

With one surgery completed roughly two months ago, and her second eye also requiring the surgery, she keeps a positive attitude.

“You just have to,” she said. “What if things were worse?”

Following her first eye surgery on November 8, Ms Morici followed her doctor’s instructions carefully. She could not bend or lift heavy items; she needed eye drops and wore an eye patch. She had to cover her eye when in the shower. She also wore her sunglasses “all day long because my eyes were dilated,” she said

“I am still doing all of that, still using one type of drop, and I still have healing to do. There are still a lot of issues,” she said.

Nonetheless, Ms Morici said she is glad to have gone through the laser treatment.

“Before the surgery I was not sure of the outcome, but I knew that without it I could go blind, so there is no choice,” she said.

Looking ahead, Ms Morici anticipates the day her surgery will be long past.

“Until this is really over and I am convinced this will really control it, then I will feel relieved,” she said. “I don’t know yet what the future brings.”

Assuaging her apprehension is her faith in her doctor, Bruce Altman.

“He’s really good. He spends all the time I need answering any questions, and I feel he is really a good person for that,” she said.

A Professional Perspective

Dr Altman noted “one problem with glaucoma is that it’s asymptomatic until the very end, and you don’t want to wait until the symptoms [appear] to begin treatment.”

In light of January as Glaucoma Awareness Month, Dr Altman wants “people to be aware,” he said. “Come in for an eye exam.”

People should schedule a regular eye exam before the age of 40, he said.

Higher risk groups, such as African Americans, people with diabetes or a family history of glaucoma, or those who are very nearsighted, for example, should be receiving regular eye exams, Dr Altman said.

He advises, “There are more problems when you come in late in the disease.”

Often without indicators, he said, “A vast majority of cases are asymptomatic,” which makes regular eye check-ups essential.

Far less common are the “eye emergencies,” including headaches or eye pain.

“We want to catch those patients before the attack with the routine exams,” said Dr Altman.

Different types of treatment can prevent eye damage or blindness, and “a majority can be controlled with eye drops,” he said. “Most people have open angle glaucoma, the most common and asymptomatic, and we usually treat it with eye drops. If not, we can move on to laser.”

Normally the eye drops, one a day, are enough, he said.