Visionaries: Episode 23, Maintaining your eye health after blindness by Susan Gray

After you have lost enough vision to be handed a white mobility cane, you may believe the worst has already happened and not feel a need to continue to see an ophthalmologist. Yet, as long as your eyes remain a part of your body, they do require annual checkups.

You may ask “what else can go wrong?”, and here is a list of eye health issues you still need to be vigilant about:

First, maintaining a healthy eye pressure is very important.  The normal range of eye pressure is from 10mmhg to 20mmhg, and anything above this level can indicate a problem.  The only way to measure eye pressure is through devices your optician or ophthalmologist  use during an exam.  Eye pressure that is in the high range can indicate Glaucoma or other problems with the eye that require medication or treatment.

Cataracts can be problematic for peers that still retain light perception, as the cataracts can block light from penetrating the pupil.  As we age, it is common to have cataracts, and having a specialist monitor them will alert you to the need for removal, should they become large enough to block out light. 

Being aware that optic nerve health should also be monitored is another factor for eye health.  The optic nerve supplies blood to the eye, and should it become damaged, the eye itself could be in danger.  When a specialist dilates your eye, he can see and track the health of the optic nerve through regular exams. 

If you have an eye disease that causes lesions, small tears in the macula that bleed, having a specialist monitor this helps to manage loss of vision or light perception through treatment.  The scarring of these lesions is also a cause of light being blocked from reaching the center of your eye. 

Peers with vision loss may not notice sudden changes in their vision caused by things like  retinal detachments.  Regular check ups ensure that unexpected issues will be caught in time to treat them.

The loss of our vision is hard enough; no one would choose to compound that with the loss of an eye.  Remember to have annual checkups by a specialist that can diagnose and treat eye diseases.  Aurora of CNY has a list of eye specialists, should you need one.