RE: Vision and Dementia

[Guest guest]

Hi Jan and Barb and all,

On the vision note, Jeff's vision has gotten so bad and scary at times

(especially when he's driving) that he went to see an opthalmologist this

morning. He went thru Jeff's history and was kind enough to spend over an

hour and a half with him. Dilated his eyes, and found that there is

significant muscle weakness in his left eye which is causing the eye to

drift, thereby causing the double and blurred vision. After reviewing his

meds, he did not recommend anything new, except for an eye patch that Jeff

can wear when the vision becomes really bad. He also got a new

prescription and chastised Jeff for not wearing his glasses at all times.

He told Jeff that to keep the muscles from gettting weaker, he needs to

give them as much help as possible. He said that Jeff may need to have his

glasses prescription re-evaluated every 6 months. The doctor does feel the

weakness is related to the MSA, and therefore is not recommending surgery.

One nice thing about a small town is that Jeff's condition has earned him

something of a " celebrity " status. Our internist apparently has started a

medical internet study group on MSA, and many of the doctors in the

community, including this opthalmologist have been participating. We ran

in to the same thing on Monday when he went to the rehab center to get

fitted for braces on his back, neck and legs. The therapist already knew

alot of Jeff's history, and really bent over backwards to explain things to

him. Thank God for small blessings like that!

JAN WROTE:

Subject: Re: Conference: Vision and Dementia

Thank you Barb. I am right there with you on this one. I can see

the confusion that my husband experiences and the short term memory

problems at times. You are correct, a better definition needs to be

given to this. As for the vision, well that simply makes sense to

me, if the brain stem is being affected than there can easily be some

problems with the muscles in the eyes. My husband sees double and

triple most of the time. He has had prisms put on his glasses but

that didn't ever really solve the problem. It doesn't sound like one

can definitively say that a particular problem does NOT happen with

MSA. MSA is very complex and seems to affect each person differently

as to the nature and severity of symptoms. Also, if people are

always told a certain symptom is not related to MSA, could it be they

are not reporting symptoms or only reporting the ones they are told

are from MSA? We initially did not report vision problems to our

neurologist because we thought it was " something else " and unrelated.

Only when I mentioned it here did I find out that many others suffer

from the same thing.

Jan