September 2022 I was standing at the kitchen sink rinsing off dishes and noticed as I looked out the kitchen window that the spindles on our black metal fence looked wavy in one portion of my vision in my left eye. I blinked thinking that maybe my eye or my contact was dry but that didn’t help so my next thought was it’s just a new and different kind of eye floater so I thought I’d just watch it (literally) and see if it changed over the next couple of days. Fast forward to the next day at work and I’m using Excel and the lines in my spreadsheet are wavy. Panic set in. My optometrist has always told me to call him immediately if I notice anything weird with my vision because of my high myopia (nearsightedness). So call him immediately, I did. He got me in that afternoon and after a dilated scan, referred me to a retinal specialist because I had developed Myopic Choroidal Neovascularization or mCNV. mCNV is the growth of abnormal blood vessels in the back of the eye which is a complication of pathological myopia, or severe nearsightedness which I’ve had since I was a child. I got my first pair of glasses when I was in kindergarten. I’m 55 now if that tells you anything.
The two days waiting until my appointment with the retina specialist were wrought with anxiety and an overwhelming fear of what my future would hold for my vision. Fellow myopes or anyone with a retinal disease knows what I mean when I say I had a crippling fear of losing my vision or what my prognosis would be. The anxiety that comes with this diagnosis isn’t often talked about. Fortunately I was referred to a very good retinal specialist who took the time to explain everything to me in a manner in which I understood and answered all of my questions in a very straightforward factual manner. There is a spectrum of symptoms with each person who has been diagnosed with Myopic Macular Degeneration and no two person’s experiences will be the same. We don’t have a crystal ball to see what will happen or if it will stabilize and remain the same. Mine unfortunately led to mCNV. There is no cure but anti-VEGF injections in the eye are used to treat the abnormal blood vessel growth.
I received my first injection of Avastin that very first appointment. It sounds painful but honestly, the numbing prep and post injection disinfection are worse than the injection itself which takes only a second and feels like a small prick. Betadine in your eye to disinfect stings like a mother! I could see the blob of Avastin in my eye but it dissipated as the evening went on and was completely gone by the next morning. I was told to sleep in an elevated position for the first night which is harder than it sounds. I would need to have a total of three injections spread out over the next three months.
The distortion and waviness got better over the next couple of weeks and my brain must have adapted to it by the second and third injection in December 2022 because I hardly noticed it. My last retinal scan after that third injection showed the blood vessel growth had been stopped. My anxiety about my future went back down to a minimal level and I honestly didn’t think too much about my vision or diagnosis for 2-1/2 years until it reared it’s unpredictability again in June of 2025.
