Parkinson’s: Vision Issues
Off to SEE the Eye Doctor
“Research has shown that visual symptoms are extraordinarily common in people living with Parkinson’s.”
My eyes have been bothering me big time. I have been seeing double. My balance is off and the worst part for me was that reading wasn't fun. It had become a strange affair of squinting, closing one eye or another and taking my glasses off then putting them back on.
I decided that I needed to see a specialist, a neuro-ophthalmologist. Neuro-ophthalmologists are either neurologists or ophthalmologists with expertise in visual symptoms from neurologic disease.
Amazingly Chris, my Parkinson's buddy had a name for me to go to- Dr. Katz. She said, besides herself, other people from her Parkinson's group had gone to him. I had to wait months to get in to see him. Which in some ways turned out to be good, because by that time I had had my heart catherization and KABOOM! Instant worse troubles from my vision. Dr, Katz checked me out and quickly decided that I needed prisms in my glasses. Prisms in glasses? It turns out that many people have them because of double vision and it works!
Here comes the DUH part.
We thought we could take Dr, Katz's prescription for the prisms and 2 older prescriptions from Dr. Ward, my regular ophthalmologist, to Walmart and get them filled. The man at Walmart immediately said they couldn't do it. They can't put two different eye doctor's prescriptions together, nope, they can't.
So I needed to make an appointment with Dr. Ward to put these 2 prescriptions together. It took another month to get in to see him.
It told me more than what I would learn from my specialist.
“When double vision is experienced, the person living with Parkinson’s should cover each eye individually. If double vision resolves when covering either eye, this is probably a convergence problem. If there is still double vision in one eye when the other is covered, this is often due to dry eye or an optical/refractive disturbance.”
To help with convergence problems:
“Occasionally, eye exercises like “pencil push-ups” can help with convergence problems. Pencil push-ups involve slowly moving a small object, like the tip of a pencil, from arm’s length towards the nose, repeating 20 or so times a few times a day for a few weeks.” I tried it, it tends to make me feel like throwing up.
“You could try an old trick of covering one eye or putting Scotch tape over one lens of your reading glasses to ensure only one eye is being used at a time.”
“Regarding glasses: reading glasses are preferable to bifocals or progressives since they provide a greater area of visibility for reading. Your eye physician can also fit reading glasses with prisms to help with double vision due to convergence insufficiency.” Ah. Prisms!
On Thursday, I was tickled pink, I finally had my appointment with Dr. Ward. It was a great appointment. He spent a lot of time with us. Mostly we laughed a lot.
He already had prisms listed, in a fill in box, on his prescriptions. We hadn't noticed.
Dr. Ward said my vision has gotten worse and …. I need prisms. He said he thought my vision problems could all be resolved.
When we left our appointment, it was 5 pm. I had 2 new prescriptions – one for progressive glasses, and one for reading. Steven and I were exhausted but we went straight back to Walmart. After trying on about a dozen glasses, I found 2 pairs that I really liked. When she told me that with my insurance, the first pair of glasses would be 1, 30, 50, I timidly asked “do you mean one thousand and thirty?” She gave me a look and said with a tiny smile, no, one hundred, and thirty.
WOW, thank you Walmart!
The lovely lady at Walmart said I would get my glasses in a week.
Stay tuned- will the vision problems be resolved?
May your vision be good,
Nancy & the Snark
Snark sure likes to throw up curveballs.
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