Before I started treatment my doctor warned that most patients experience vision changes during treatment. Don’t run out and get new glasses, he said. However, for a small percentage of patients, eyesight actually improves. The changes, for better or for worse, are supposed to be temporary.
For once I made it into the right “small number of patients who experience” x. Lucky me! For the past two weeks I’ve experienced some improved eyesight. My glasses don’t work for me–in fact, they make my vision worse for the most part. I don’t wear them for meetings, sewing, or crocheting, but only for extended reading.
One of my eye issues is astigmatism, which is caused by eyeball pointiness. I believe the pressure of the hyperbaric chamber is pressing my eyes, as if they were clay, into their erstwhile round shape. I don’t know anything about eyeballs, so forgive the extremely unscientific description. Whatever the cause, I’m enjoying stepping back a decade or more to a time when I didn’t need to wear glasses.
But with improvements in my close-up vision have come new deficiencies in my distance vistion. I’ve become myopic, the opposite of my natural inclination. My distance vision is so blurry I can’t see my 6’4″ husband across the grocery store unless he waves both hands in the air. I think this could be attributed to dry eyes. The 10% humidity in the oxygen chamber is quite desiccating. If I had realized this was going to happen, I would have begun using eye drops much sooner. The drops do seem to help with my visual acuity.
Driving home in the dark after treatments is pretty scary, but I do fine as long as I don’t stray from my usual route home. From my reading I’ve discovered that a small percentage of patients continue to experience improved eyesight after treatment. I’m holding out hope that I can be a member of that club.
