This is a sixth in a series of posts on my odyssey with a dilated eye. I’ve tagged all the posts in the series here.
I was born legally blind in my right eye. At a certain point, my retina detached, my eye fully dilated, and I developed painfully high eye pressure. The good news was that I had glaucoma eyedrops to properly treat the pressure. The bad news was that my right eye was so dilated it looked like a black marble, and it was likely to stay that way for the rest of my life, or as long as I had the eye.
Several months after first being diagnosed, I visited my specialist for the latest in a series of follow-up visits. My eye pressure had remained stable in recent visits, giving some hope that (for the near term, at least) the eye wasn’t going to change. In addition, the doctor had gradually taken me off of two of the meds: prednisolone AC, an anti-inflammatory steroid, and atropine, a dilation medicine meant to perhaps open up my eye. The inflammation was gone and it was clear the atropine wasn’t effecting any changes. That left me taking two drops twice a day: brimonidine tartrate and dorzolamide-timolol, both to lower eye pressure.
The dropping of the prednisolone was especially important. Prednisolone, you see, is not supposed to be taken with contacts. I don’t wear contacts, but there was this cosmetic matter of my fully dilated eye, which I wanted to do something about. With the steroid off the table, I was free to pursue a prosthetic contact.
I had incredibly mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I was self-conscious about the eye. Despite the fact that, because of my darker eye color, it wasn’t too noticeable from a distance, I was around people enough that I wanted something done about it. In many ways, the dilated eye was more emotionally traumatic than the elevated eye pressure.
On the other hand, I was also uncertain about putting money into a prosthetic contact, especially if my eye suddenly decided to shut down and I had to have it removed entirely, a sobering possibility given the situation.
After several months of relative stability, though, I decided to at least look into it.
I went to an optometrist affilated with my eye specialist’s hospital network, traveling downtown to a little eye center in a large hospital. There I sat across from the optometrist, explaining in a choked voice (I almost never cry but I came close that day) how I just wanted to find a way to look more normal again.
He said there were two leading options. The first was to get a custom contact from Orion. This contact would be based on a kit, and would essentially be drawn by laser using my good eye as the blueprint. The upside is that it ought to look a whole lot like my good eye. The bad news is it was a few hundred dollars for a single, one-year contact … meaning that if it was torn or lost, I was out a lot of money.
Neither my vision insurance or my health insurance, by the way, covers prosthetic contacts.
The second option was Air Optix Colors, manufactured by Alcon. These were simple 30-day disposable soft contacts that came in a limited range of colors. The upside, though, was that these contacts were literally 5% of the cost of an Orion, and that was just through the office — once issued a prescription, I could buy them online for half the cost of that.
After trying on a brown Air Optix, my optometrist and I both agreed that I should try the Air Optix first.
Overall, it turned out to be a good choice. A prosthetic contact doesn’t dilate like a normal eye does, so pupil sizes will be different between the two eyes in very bright or very dark situations, but since most people don’t focus on both eyes when they look at you, that isn’t automatically fatal. There was also the learning curve of getting the contact in, but with a makeup mirror and some time, I’ve gotten to the point where, on most days, I can have it in in less than 30 seconds.
Helpfully, my contact ended up being a very good match with my other eye. Not long after getting the contact, my wife and I found ourselves in a social situation in bright indoor light, and my wife later told me how well the contact resembled my good eye. That was a moment of nice progress after a year of emotional frustration.
It didn’t bring life back to my old normal, but for the first time in many months, I could look in the mirror and see something closer to who I was before.