Anonymous
Hi, Lisa. I, too, am dealing with the fear of the Graves going into my eyes. My mother has Graves, with the bulgy eyes, and the day after I was diagnosed, I was seen by an opthamologist. The information I got from him was not particularly heartening, but wasn’t altogether bad either. First off, not everybody with Graves gets bad eye problems. Actually, I think the percentages are pretty small. But according to my ophtho there is absolutely no way of telling how much eyes will be impacted. They simply do not know. And, no, there is no treatment available to forstall it happening. If it gets bad, they can give steroids, radiation to try to reduce the swelling. If it gets really bad, there is a surgery to remove some of the bone behind the eyes (I believe that’s what’s involved with orbital decompression). But the eye problems have to go their course, IF they appear.
My endo suggested a type of eye drop, that she said was good for Graves eyes. They work well to get rid of the slightly gritty feeling I get from time to time. And using them, I feel like I’M doing something to help. Psychological, but, who knows??? About the only thing I can figure out to do right now, is to try to keep irritation to the eyes at a minimum.