[Anonymous January 16, 1997 at 12:37 am Post count: 93172]

#1165776

Monte, I don’t really know what to say about the eye problem, and I hope your wife is doing okay. There are several posts that may help you with some of your questions.
Nancy P’s post dated November 9th may help you out some.Also uncle Bruce may shed some light on surgery. There’s a lot of posts on what to do about the eyes here.
Just keep looking at back posts and yoou may find something that will help.
Hang in there!
Ann N

[Anonymous January 16, 1997 at 1:46 am Post count: 93172]

#1165777

Hi Monte, Lots of questions!

The eye disease and the thyroid are not necessarily related, but can be (that’s a confusing answer, huh?) I don’t have thyroid trouble but have had the eye disease for four years now.

The normal way doctors will treat the eye problems is with first steroids to shrink the swelling, if that doesn’t do it, or a person can’t handle the steroids then orbital irradiation is the next option. When all else fails they may consider surgery.

If the eyes are just swelling, they sometimes will wait to do anything unless the vision is affected, as Graves’ eye disease will usually stabilize after a couple of years. I had optical nerve involvement so had steroid treatment and radiation. My eyes have gone back in my head quite nicely now.

Cold compresses do help! My favorite is cold slices of Tofu over the eyes. Recipes to come later. It really helps. (Trust me on this one!)

Be sure you go to the NGDF home page and read the info available there and join us if you can.

Bruce

[Anonymous January 16, 1997 at 5:26 am Post count: 93172]

#1057331

Thanks to everyone who maintains and contributes to this BB. My wife was just diagnosed and browsing here has been very helpful. Now here are some questions: – She has bad troubles with her eyes, but the other GD symptons aren’t that bad at this time. The endo didn’t feel she necessarily had to start medication (PTU) — his opinion is also that the eye problems have to be managed completely separately and that the thyroid treatment won’t help them. This is very confusing! I gather the eye disease isn’t that tightly linked to the thyroid disease but shouldn’t treating the thyroid levels have SOME beneficial effect on the eyes? And … wouldn’t NOT treating the thyroid possibly lead to worse eye problems??? Should she or shouldn’t she?- Also re eyes … to judge from web pages and pamphlets we’ve been reading, it seems like if cold compresses don’t help, boom! the next option is orbital surgery. Isn’t there anything in between, e.g. something to relieve the swelling around the eyes? We are going to a newophthalmologist next week but would appreciate any advice in advance. (Last question: is it worth trying to find a specialist in Graves eye disease or do people do ok with regular ophthalmologists?) Thanks very much, Monte

[Author]

Posts