Al this started when I started getting eye infections all the time, even before my diagnosis. I wore out tons of contact lenses. I had suspected dirty mascara or similar. So I suffered for 2-3 years before I was diagnosed, I thought it was because I put in and took out contact lenses quickly and although they were monthly lenses I wore them longer and longer because I was too simply too lazy to write the date down to remember.
Every time my eyes became inflamed, I couldn’t see at first, my eyes were stuck together by a disgusting secretion. Then it started to itch, I couldn’t wear contact lenses for days, only glasses.
Then came my diagnosis and I learned that eye inflammation is not caused by dirt. The inflammations accumulated, my fine motor skills got worse and worse. Bringing the tiny, wafer-thin lens into the eye became more and more adventurous. I thought at some point I would gouge my eyes out. Then I decided to wear glasses permanently. I can’t pursue my hobby anymore anyway, I can’t do sports, I don’t have a man for whom I want to be chic, so what’s the point. I had the first pair of binoculars of my life made for expensive money. I also have to say that I am farsighted and quite blind without visual aids. A week with those glasses and MSA is like riding the merry-go-round. I hardly dared to move, I didn’t dare to go up or down the stairs at all. At that time I was still driving a car – with glasses it was unimaginable.
Then I got used to my glasses. Pretty soon I realized that I couldn’t wear sunglasses like that. I have a collection of fashionable RayBan aviator glasses – now for nothing. Without glasses I can see almost nothing.
The next disaster came when I noticed that I became totally sensitive to light. It takes a while until I realized that this is also a “MSA gift”. It started moderately at first, then it felt like cutting onions, my eyes were watering, no movement was possible, I was completely blind. I read somewhere that a person needs three things to walk; the sense of balance, the ability to see and the ankle joints. In my case the first two fall away, and so I am as good as paralyzed, like a turtle on its back.
However: it has now become clear from my findings that this sensitivity to light does not always occur, and I have not yet found out what it depends on. There are sunny days where the sun and the brightness doesn’t bother me, then there are days when it is cloudy but just bright, my eyes don’t stop watering and I don’t know what all this has to do with.
In any case, I have now ordered sunglasses in sea-strength – the whole RayBans come on the heap “things from my former life”. And the new glasses on the pile “Things the health insurance doesn’t pay, but I have to thank MSA for it”.