I want to talk to you about my difficult experience with severe red eye problems and how a special kind of contact helped me. My name is Jaycene Soper and I had my surgery for an Acoustic Neuroma on May 3rd of 2006. I had a very small tumor but my facial nerve was still traumatized due to its location. And so I ended up with a slanted smile and an eye that would not tear or close.
My surgeons told me that my face should return to normal along with my eye. But they said I needed to wait for a year to let the nerves heal and regenerate. After the year was over, I did lose my Bells Palsy and my eye did close but not completely and my eye also started to tear and cry real tears. However, I ended up with synkinesis and started going to an occupatioal therapist who has helped me with retraining the nerves that rewired the wrong way. And so when I started my therapy in June of 2007, my eye still needed alot of ointments during the day and at night along with eye drops. For awhile, I seemed to be able to stay on top of my eye, but then all of a sudden my eye got infected and the doctor had me use tobraDex to clear it up. And it seemed after it had become infected that first time, I started to struggle with severe red eye. I went to a couple of diffrent opthalmalogists and the first one put a plug in my tear duct to see if that would help. It came out within a week. I then decided to go to a well known opthamalogist at a university and he told me that I was not a good cadidate for that type of treatment. He diagnosed me with bletharitis which is fairly common for people who have to use a lot of ointments. It is caused from good bacteria that we all have living on our skin and this good bacteria can secrete chemicals that are irritating to your skin. And so he gave me an inexpensive idea or way to clean out my eyes and then prescribed erythromycin which I was supposed to apply to the base of my upper and lower eyelashes. He told me it was a problem I would have to deall with the rest of my life.
Well this treatment was very sootihing to the eyes, but it did not take away the red eye problem and so I decided to get on the ANA Discussion Forum and see if there might be something that worked for someone else. And that very day someone had said that they had found this new contact that had helped them. And so I went to our Optometrist who has been one of the most helpful and compassionate caregiver I've had since my surgery. Anyway, I told him about this new contact that was supposed to help dry eyes and interestingly, he recommended a different one which is ACUVUE OAYSYS with HYDRACLEAR PLUS. It is a disposable contact that some people wear all day and all night for two weeks at a time and then take out and throw away. It is suppose to be one of the best contacts for dry eyes. Anyway, it took me about three weeks to a month to feel comfortable wearing it. But after I started wearing it full time, I noticed a marked improvement in my eyes. After I started wearing them, I only had one incident with red eyes. About eight months after I started using them while still going to the occupational therapist my eye made a turn for the better and so I know longer need ointments and the only eye drops I use is an eye drop named BLINK which was made specifically for this contact. And I wear my contact full time now during the day and night taking it out once a week for one night break and then starting over with a new contact at the end of two weeks. I feel like I have kept a fairly positive attitude since my surgery, but the one thing that could really make me feel dicouraged was the challenges I faced with my eye. And so I sincerely hope this information might help someone, and remember that this contact helped me immensely before my changed for the better. With much love to all of you, Jaycene Soper
