Hello, I have Diabetic Retinopathy

[Alv81]

I have had diabeties for 10 years and I started to lose vision in my left eye. I had laser eye surgery done on both eyes (vision was bad in both, but left eye was worse) and I had lost 80% of my vision. For 3 months already I can't see.

Can someone tell me what to do as far as treatments or what doctors? Thanks.

[am1977]

Hi there...:hello:

Wanted to welcome you to a wonderful forum and great bunch of people. You will be sure to find a lot of support, info., and advice. :top:

I'm sorry, I don't think I'm going to be much help in terms of treatment or doctors for retinopathy. I actually know very little about it. However, I think there are members here who do know quite a bit and I'm sure they will be responding soon.

I wish you luck with your treatments and please feel free to visit and post as you like :)

[Cinnabon]

Welcome Alv81,

I discovered my Retinopathy a little less than a year ago. My doctors neglected to see what was going on w/ my eyes till recently. Feel free to contact me with any questions. You can also look up my story on here. There are other members also going through this. I believe one of them is "STRIKE", his wife is going through this, just like me.

Hope to chat w/ you!

[sydneya]

:ciao: Welcome to a very helpful and enjoyable forum!! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
I have not had to deal with retinopathy. I do go to an ophthamologist every year for diabetic eye checks. He checks for retinopathy, glaucoma, cataracts and the normal glass prescription. He's discovered some slow acting cataracts, but no retinopathy yet. You need the eye doctor (ophthamologist) not the optometrist.
We'll all enjoy hearing from you often. Questions, answers, encouragement--anything that is helpful to you and us. Hope to hear from you soon.

[strike]

I have had diabeties for 10 years and I started to lose vision in my left eye. I had laser eye surgery done on both eyes (vision was bad in both, but left eye was worse) and I had lost 80% of my vision. For 3 months already I can't see.

Can someone tell me what to do as far as treatments or what doctors? Thanks.


Hello and welcome! Yes, my Wife has been dealing with diabetic retinopathy as well as macular adema quite a bit in the last few months. I hope you don't mind that I'm using the larger type, I know that when my wife was having problems, sending emails to her like this helped a lot.

While I am far from a Doctor, I have studied up on diabetic retinopathy and may be able to give you some information. First I need to ask some questions and if you could answer these questions for both eyes separately, that would be a great help to us.

When you say you can't see, do you know what your vision is? Can you see your hand in front of your face? Is your vision less than 20/200?

Do you see a lot of red/brown color in your vision? Are there large black blobs in your line of sight? This could be a sign of numerous hemmorhages going on in your eye. In this case, a Vitrectomy is probably your best bet. That's an actual surgery where they suck out your dirty/bloody vitreous fluid and replace it with clear saline solution. My wife had this operation and it works really well!

OR

Is everything simply really, really blurry? If so, you might be suffering from macular adema. This is where the macula (center part of your retina) is swollen and causes your vision to become quite blurry. My wife (and Cinnabon on the site here) have had steroid shots (Kenelog) and in both cases, the swelling has gone down dramatically!

OR

Do you have a combination of both? Which could be...well...a combination of both LOL.

In any case, you need to see an Opthalmologist. They need to be able to give you some expert advice and opinions on what's going on. What you have is more than likely correctable, depending on just how far gone you are. Schedule and appointment and have them look at your eyes, you wont regret it!

If you reply with some of the information I asked about, we'll hopefully be able to give you some more help.