Scleral Buckle

I've learned that I apparently have two genetic abnormalities in my eyes. I'll try to describe them as I understand them...

1. progressive high myopia

This means that not only am I severely myopic (nearsighted), but after I stopped growing at around age 20, my eyes kept growing (elongating). The longer your eye is, the more nearsighted you are. Light coming through your lens at the front of your eye focuses too early and doesn't reach the back of your eye, so your vision is unfocused. The elongation also begins to weaken your retina, as it stretches and stretches with your eye. If you imagine a red rubber ball from your school days, the retina is like the inner layer of rubber (the white part of the ball).

2. lattice degeneration

As the retina stretches, it weakens along the shorter diameter walls of the eye. The weakened sections look like lattice work, thus the name.

Yesterday, my retinal specialist explained that the combination of these two issues will mean that while I'm young(-ish), I will need to update the prescription for my contacts and glasses over time - duh. More importantly, I will be at extremely high risk for macular degeneration when I'm older (60+ years old or even 50+). Macular degeneration causes blindness over time.

In an effort to keep my eyes from elongating, he has now told me that I'm a candidate for the scleral buckling procedure (surgery). He'd start with one eye, and let me recover, and then do the other eye at some point in the future.

Although I didn't know the name at the time, he had mentioned the surgery to me at least once before. However, the context at that time was to say that in the future, children (notably, probably my children) would not be allowed to have their myopia advance so drastically as mine did when I was a kid. They could put a 'sling' on the back of the eye to keep it from stretching. That's the buckle.

So, now I am a candidate myself. My vision will continue to deteriorate with or without the buckle(s). They would just give me the opportunity to slow it down drastically, and keep me on a higher road to maintain as much vision as possible, into my old age.

The side effects that I know of are:

1. pain and pressure in the eye (not sure for how long)
2. oozing and bleeding around the eye
3. bruising of the muscles around the eye, that will cause double vision for 1-3 months
- I'll need to do exercises to get the slow eye to move faster, and prevent scarring.

Apparently, my doctor is the specialist who proved through a study that this procedure is effective, and now he's one of the only (if not *the* only) one in the country who will perform the surgery. Here's one of his papers.

Not sure what I'll do yet, but thought I'd get that written down for the historical record, as I remember it.