My 1st Eye Injection Today...

<MainPage> On 8/13, about 2 weeks ago, at the ophthalmologist's office, I thought I was in for just an annual look-see and renewal of referral to the retina specialist. For about a year, I've been going to the specialist every few months because I had dry AMD in left eye and wet AMD in right eye and specialist anticipated possible bleeding back of the right eye eventually which would need an injection.

However, 2 weeks ago, that dude said my left "dry" AMD had now become "wet" and there IS bleeding back there.

So today I was at the retina specialist and he agreed and did my first eye injection.

Have to admit there was a lot of subdued terror and fear at that thought but I tried to relax and deal with it. In the waiting rooms, I talked to several patients who were going for regular injections for this and were tolerating it in many different ways so it still didn't help me figure how I'd deal with it.

Turns out my specialist now thinks I'm an elderly wimp (sigh). See, my left eye is the most jittery when you start coming toward it. It will clamp shut. Tight! And it will take 4 quarterbacks to open it again. Just saying. So after he had me put my head back so far I had a momentary vertigo from those loose crystals in my inner ear, every time he came near that eye - yep - it clamped shut. Tight.

He kept telling me to relax, that I wasn't helping, it was only going to be a few seconds. In retrospect, he was correct - it didn't take even a whole minute or two at most to do what he had to do. But my eyelid wasn't having any of that. Somehow, he managed to get it done. And I felt embarrassed.

Ok - so in my case, I felt no real pain, honestly! I've had worse pain the past with probing IV efforts. He said as the numbing meds wore off today it would feel as though I had gravel or sand in my eye. And that's about all that bothered me, except the eye was weeping off and on all day, so I've been dabbing with tissues. Oh, and they told me to use artificial tears and it took me all day but I finally got one drop in that eye tonight. Very uncooperative eye. At the most, I guess I could say it felt a bit "sore" sometimes but no real pain.

Bottom line - I must return EVERY MONTH until the bleeding stops which could be a year, or two months, or never. But I plan to practice an open-eye-vacant-stare for the next 30 days so that eye will behave when I go for the next one.

Rolling along...

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