Rita’s Checkup

Rita had the best eye checkup she’s had since she was first diagnosed with glaucoma. She’s totally blind and always will be. As of now, there’s nothing that can fix her vision. I keep hoping and there were some reports of some progress in restoring human vision but I’m not sure we’ll ever see it in time to help Rita.

We’ve seen several vets and each one seems to tell us something different so what I’m repeating here may not be the same thing some of you have been told but the vet today told us that the pressure is supposed to be less than 20 . . ideally less than 16. I think it’s been about two years we’ve been dealing with Rita’s glaucoma. When we first took her to the specialist in Austin, the pressure in each eye was near 100, maybe a bit over 100. Rita has responded quite well to the drops prescribed for her.

In fact, the pressure in her right eye was staying too low and the vet in Abilene (the closest one to us that has the tools to check her pressure) told us to start putting drops in the right eye only twice a day instead of three times a day. The pressure was still too low so on our last visit, she told us to stop using drops in the right eye. With the trips to Missouri and Louisiana, we just haven’t been back over to Abilene to the vet since early December so I was anxious to hear what her readings were. The vet was so happy! The pressure in her right eye, with no drops for three months, was 6. That’s so great. The pressure in her left eye, with drops three times a day, was 14 and that’s super great because that eye has been the problem eye.

So long as we can keep the pressure down and the eyes look healthy, the vet said there’s no reason to talk about removing her eyes. I’ve just melted into a puddle of tears every time they’ve talked about removing her eyes but now, I’ve accepted that she sees nothing and she’ll never see anything so if we HAVE to remove them, I’ll probably cry but I’ll be ok doing it. I can hope it never comes to that but chances are . . some day it will. Thankfully, today was an encouraging report.

On the way home, she snuggled up against Vince and slept like a baby all the way home.