[RKDinOKC]

Got retinopathy. It us where the blood vessels in the retina swell and start leaking. When they swell your vision gets worse. When they leak you get floaters. After leaking the leaks cause more blood vessels to grow which covers rod and cone cells and you get less resolution (macular degeneration). Also the vitreous fluid, which is more of a gel membrane pulls your retina away from the back of your eye (detached retina). All this activity causes cataracts to form too.

Got into a program testubg drugs for shots in the eyeball the stop the vessel swelling and stop them from leaking. Got paid $25 shot instead of it costing $2000. Also got lasered over 3000 places in each eye to stop the bleeding and basically spot weld the retina to the back of the eye. Have had surgery to clean the blood out of the vitreous fluid, twice on one eye once on the other. And have had cararact surgery in both eyes. Have not had drugs since last April. Vision got to 20/120 before it started getting better. Now it is 20/20.

Friends sister had a similar problem and they did the cataract surgery too soon after removing vitreous fluid and she is now blind.

Was told when I started the shot in the eye program there was a 1 in 1000 chance I would go blind. The prognosis is to go blind anyway so I signed up.

Now go in every 6 months to be evaluated to see if there is any vessel swelling or leaking. So far have had none for 8 months.

It was really scary because was 20/30 when started treatment and it went up to 20/120 over the next year an a half before it started getting better.

Started after complaining to eye doc that signs an billboards on the highway were getting difficult to read the fine print. Then he sent me to a retinal speciallist.