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Saturday, November 22, 2008

Freaky Eye Saturday

i was watching the Texas Tech/Oklahoma game, but that is a laugher right now (42-7 at the half). so here's a some information on Diabetic Eye Disease.

it is estimated that almost 8% (or over 23 million Americans) have diabetes. so almost one in every 12 people that you meet will be diabetic. this condition can cause devastating vision loss if left untreated.

if a patient's blood sugar levels are out of control, their prescription will fluctuate dramatically. usually, this causes patients to seem more nearsighted than they truly are.

here's a fundus photo of an eye with diabetic eye disease:



just to orient you, the yellow circle is the optic nerve. the red lines are the blood vessels. the large red splotches are termed "blot hemorrhages" or large blood leakages within the retinal nerve fiber layers. when the blood is leaking out into the retina and not reaching it's target tissues, the body can try to grow new blood vessels (called "neovascularization") to compensate. this is a valiant effort by the body, but it actually makes things worse.

here's the main point of this post: every diabetic needs an eye exam AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR!!! if i don't see any blood leakages in the retina, once a year is plenty to monitor their eye health. if i see just a few tiny blood leakages, i will follow them every 6 months. if i see an eye like the one above, i'll probably watch them every month until this resolves. if any blood approaches the macula (our most sensitive area of vision), the vision can drop very quickly, and surgery might be necessary.

do you know someone who is a diabetic? ask them when was the last time they had their eyes examined. make sure they know how important regular eye care is for them. we only get one set of eyes.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

the other day, i got a wild hair...





well, we got our foundation fixed last week. so that means we can get started on remodeling. so one night this week, i went to our master bathroom to try to peel some loose wallpaper. much to my delight, the glue must have broken down over the years, and the wallpaper just peeled off completely. this was a major relief. we vividly remember how difficult it was to remove the old wallpaper at our house in Alabaster....scoring it and soaking it with DIF gel. it was a nightmare. so now, we've got bare sheetrock to work with. :)

stay tuned for updates on how we're planning to reconfigure our master bath.