Glacoma/eye issues

[Lemontree]

Hi,
Just wanted to throw this out there and see if anyone has comments...

I was diagnosed with congenital hydro when I was around 8 months old..I've had four surgies but none in almost 29 years.

My eyes have always been AWESOME..no glasses or anything ..

But then a couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with astimitizm..so I wear glasses at night when I drive and it helps with the glare.

Also about 5 years ago, a doc. mentioned that I had large cups/behind my eye?.and he said that could be a concern but he did no further tests.

fast forward to this past summer. My current eye doc. also noticed that I had large cups..he did a whole slew of tests, looking into my eye, checking the nerves, the pressure, the perphrial and then he measured my corneas.

He said that while my pressure was normal, when one has thin corneas that can be a false reading so he automatically added a few points to the pressure reading he had read, and that put the pressure into more of a high range.

All the other tests he did were within normal but there was some evidence of some borderline glacoma/damage here and there...nothing extreme and since these are kind of a baseline tests, he didn't seem to concerned but wanted to follow up at 6 months or a year.

When I talked to the neurolgist she didn't seem too concerned either. I guess I am just freaking out, because these are my eyes and most people it seems get glacoma later in life...I'm not yet 40...(I guess I've relaxed a bit since I went through all these tests, but I couldn't write to anyone then because the B.T. was done.)

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Lemontree

[KathiDG]

I have large "cups" too, plus a lot of scar tissue/damage from the 1st time my shunt failed when I was around 5 yrs old. This past April, I was seen by an eye doctor (NOT a neuro-ophth), and he was concerned that my optic nerve looked pale and he said I had borderline glaucoma.

BUT...my neurosurgeon sent me to a neuro-ophth up by him at the Medical College, and that doctor did not see any kind of a glaucoma. Just my optic nerve is tilted where it goes into the back of the brain. Also, through him, I found out that the back of my brain is "different" I guess my occipital cortex (part of the brain that controls vision...how the eyes see things...) is deformed...that's about it with my eyes. No glaucoma after all it sounds. I'm thinking that maybe the shunt problem WAS what the eye doc was seeing in the 1st place. I know shunt problems can affect the optic nerve fairly quickly...

But, I am not textbook with anything hydro related. I don't have the normal malfunction symptoms. All I had that tipped me off that I could've had shunt failure was the fact that nothing worked for the headaches, I was having problems concentrating sometimes at work, very tired and nauseous (no vomiting) most of the time....oh yeah...plus the darned headaches...Ick...I will NEVER forget how THOSE felt....after having them for SO MANY MONTHS....those things stick with ya... lol Thank God all is figured out now...

Glad I don't have glaucoma either...I'm only 29!!

[LIZARD]

No glaucoma, but I did get bifocals at 26 yo! Glaucoma can be congenital, too. I knew a guy in high school who was nearly blind from it at 16 yo. :( We do have a higher risk of vision issues--even those typically "reserved" for older people--because of hydro.


LIZARD :)

[Nat Hyland]

my eyesight (in my GOOD eye, that is - almost no vision in the other one anyway) deteriorated quite suddenly and significantly when I began university and had to start reading lecture boards, often from long distances. I have since been prescribed a long distance lens, which has been increased in strength once. Have you been doing something lately that you haven't previously done that might be putting pressure on your eyes? Perhaps you've strained your eyes doing something? I don't know much about the "cups" thing though, either. I had a friend at school (at 13 years of age) who had glaucoma, and her vision was very bad.

I hope you can sort it out.

Nat.