Visual loss, double vision, discomfort and sensitivity to bright lights: What can be done about this?
Symptoms
Thyroid Eye Disease (TED) is usually caused by an overactive thyroid gland. It causes inflammation of the tissues behind the eye socket, sometimes leading to the eye bulging out. Many affected patients will experience watery or gritty eyes and sensitivity to bright lights. In a small proportion of patients, the optic nerve is damaged, leading to blurred vision and to altered colour and contrast vision, whereby colours appear ‘washed out’.
Read more about TED here:
https://www.rnib.org.uk/your-eyes/eye-conditions-az/thyroid-eye-disease/
Story
Let me introduce you to Hannah, who was diagnosed with TED over 25 years ago.
In the active stage of her disease, she developed severe inflammation of the eye muscles and surrounding tissues behind her eyes, causing her eyes to bulge so significantly, that she was unable to close her eyelids fully. She underwent surgery to allow her to close the eyelids and treatment to to manage the overactive thyroid gland. She never received ‘de-bulking’ treatment, which is sometimes offered to reduce the protuberance of the eyeballs.
After the initial eyelid surgery, one of her eyelids became droopy and she recently received further treatment to let more light into her eye.
‘The difference is amazing! I can suddenly see more around-about me and I don’t bump into low-hanging obstacles any more!’
Despite all the medical interventions, Hannah continued to have problems with reduced vision and light sensitivity. She is constantly trying to manage the amount of light coming into her eyes (avoiding looking into light sources) and ensuring that she has enough light to distinguish details with her reduced clarity of vision and problems seeing in low contrast conditions.
Although Hannah was able to stay independent, she was finding it hard to navigate in sunny conditions and she had difficulties reading labels on packages, instructions and correspondence.
Simple interventions go a long way
I gave Hannah a spectacle-mounted visor to block incoming light, which could be attached to her habitual spectacles, similar to this:
https://irishuys.nl/product/zonneklepje/
She finds herself wearing them indoors and outdoors.
'The spectacle-mounted visors are more useful than an ordinary visor as the spectacle-mounted visor has a snug fit around the eyes and doesn’t let in sunlight from the sides at all'
‘I can enjoy a sunny day outdoors once more as I’m not dazzled by the light coming in from the top and the sides!’
I also issued her with magnifiers to enable her to see small print and she no longer has to ask other people to read her confidential mail with her, leading to more independence.
'I carry the magnifier with me wherever I go. I can't really live without it any more!'
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