Ricardo G
Hello! Well, what can I say about myself?? I am 20 years old and I was diagnosed with Open angle glaucoma just this past month of May 2003. One
of my greatest fears has always been to go blind, or have a vision problem.
Guess my fear became a reality, now that I have glaucoma. Ironically, I am one
of those new cases of people who have glaucoma The only way to prevent further nerve damage is to lower my IOP to 10. I am lucky that the medication I've been using for this past month has lowered my IOP from 19 to 13 on both of my eyes. Unlucky that I do have Open angle glaucoma. I am lucky that I have my family on my side and lucky that I'm getting help from both my optometrist and an ophthalmologist. Now, on to my story, a month ago, I was suffering from double vision, blurry vision and auroras. At first I was thinking that maybe I was suffering from early signs of myopia, since I have a long family history of family members suffering from myopia. But, to my surprise....my local optometrist found out that I had glaucoma with cupping. I couldn't believe it!! At
first I was scared and I was sad, I felt like God had left me alone. I felt
like this happened to me because I did something bad. I felt like this was the
end of everything for me. I mean!! A 20 year old college student with all of
his life ahead of him, with glaucoma?? And that 20 year old was...me?? I
couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe the optometrist. He gave me some
medication and I decided to take it and use it as the doctor ordered. Then, a month passed by and I decided to see an ophthalmologist. With that in mind, I was happy thinking that maybe the optometrist was wrong. Well...I was wrong, and it was positive, I had glaucoma. And it was advanced. The ophthalmologist even told me that it was so advanced that I have a chance to either use medication now, or to decide on surgery. I decided that I will try to control it with medication, even if I have to use 3 of them at once. I will leave surgery as a last option. I still have hope that I’ll be able to control my glaucoma with the medications I have. Chances are that I'll be able to. The
only fear I have now is losing my vision, I
have to keep on going for myself and my family. Chances are that I had this
glaucoma for a while now, but!! I will stop it from destroying my vision. Oh
yeah, I'm also studying to become a computer animator and I'm learning
Japanese. I can't give up my dream of becoming a computer animator now can I??
I can't give up my dream of one day going to Japan and seeing Fuji-San. The bad vision and the auroras I was seeing went away. But I still see some floaters in my vision along with light sensitivity during the day time. But as long as I am able to see and I have both of my eyes working nothing really matters to me. All I have to do is take care of my eyes from now on.
Hopefully I'll be able to see my future children and my future grand-children.
Only time and God will be able to show me that. I will always believe in God
and will always have hope that Glaucoma will not take away my vision. I
will wait for that day, with open arms.
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