A Story of Glaucoma,

by Stefanie Risner

This story is dedicated to my family, and the doctor that saved my eyesight when I was only a year old.

This book is for ages 13 and up, it is based on a true story. Some readers may find the information disturbing in this story.

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When I was only three months old, on the day before Easter, my mom and dad were going through our daily shower routine. My mom would take me with her in the shower and bath me, then pass me to my dad.

When I was done and clean, she passed me to my father who dried, and lotioned me up, and got me dressed. By then mom would be done, and take me to feed me while dad got cleaned up. On this particular day, Mom noticed that my right eye looked funny. She describes it as a milky white film covering the whole eye.

She carried me into my dad, and said

"Look at her eyes, does something not look right?"

She purposefully did not tell him which eye looked off. He exclaimed,

"Oh my god, did I get lotion in her right eye?!"

My parents then made multiple attempts to flush out my right eye, to no avail. Not knowing what else to do, they took me to the urgent care clinic

The doctor was baffled. She didn't have any idea what was wrong. She started calling ophthalmologists offices, which took a while due to the holiday weekend. She finally reached a pediatric ophthalmologist named Doctor Braverman, who was at home, and 45 minutes away from the clinic. Dr. Braverman was insistent that the doctor not let us leave, that he was on his way to see us.

When Dr. Braverman arrived, he let out a big sigh of relief when saw me.

He then asked, "Do you want the good news, or the bad news first?" They looked at him stunned, then said.

"I guess the good news first?"

Dr. Braverman said, "I thought I was coming to tell a set of parents that their daughter was dying."

He then went on to explain that he thought I had cancer, but in reality I only had glaucoma. The bad news was that if I didn't have surgery to fix it before Monday I would become permanently blind.

But there was more, the eye drops to keep the pressures down in my eyes cost $100 for only a little tiny bottle. The eye drops were necessary to keep the pressures down till the surgery could be performed.

Mom and Dad decided the money was worth it to save my vision. The surgery was then planed for Monday at 7am. I wasn't aloud to have anything to eat from midnight on till after the surgery was completed.

The type of surgery required is called a Trebulectomy.

A Trebulectomy is where the doctor cuts a canal in the conjunctiva, which is the pink tissue surrounding the eye. He then placed a mesh fiber material in the canal and fills it with a cancer drug to keep it from healing. The canal allows the fluid to escape off the eye to keep the pressures down.

My parents arrived promptly at 6am for pre-op. I was cranky and upset because I was hungry, Mom couldn't hold me because she was the one who had to nurse me, and that just made me more upset. So my Yaya took on the task of keeping me calm.

With glaucoma the more a baby cries, the higher the pressures climb, and the greater the risk of permanent blindness becomes. So it was vital to keep me calm.

Unfortunately, the surgery was scheduled at Children's Mercy. Children's Mercy Hospital is a specialty hospital for pediatrics only, this means that they also handle critical emergency patients. As it would happen, several critical surgeries happened that day, pushing my surgery back from 7am, to 7pm.

Imagine how difficult that must have been to keep a starving baby from getting upset for an additional 12 hours when they haven't have anything to eat since midnight. And there is no way to explain to them why they can't have something to eat.

The surgery seemed to be a success and the left eye was scheduled to be operated on in one week. An eye-patch was put over the right eye as it healed, and after one week the day before the left eye was scheduled to be operated on, Dr. Braverman discovered that the surgery had failed, because the healing power of the eye manged to heal the canal he had created. He had to re-do the right eye instead of the operating on the left.

A little known fact; The eye has the number one ability of the body to heal the quickest. The Trebulectomy surgery is not always successful due to this fact.

The second surgery on the right eye was successful, and the left eye was operated on the following week. The doctor was worried that the left eyes Trebulectomy had also failed, so he put me to sleep, a week after the surgery and found that in fact it was successful, and he woke me back up.

I have not had to have another Trebulectomy since then. I am currently 16 years old, and it is unknown if I will ever have to have another Trebulectomy or multiple Trebulectomies ever again.

What we do know is I have to keep an eye on my pressures and often have to use special eye drops to keep them low.

Glaucoma Facts:

Congenital Glaucoma, the kind I had, is the type people are born with. They are born without an aqueous duct. The aqueous duct allows the fluid build up on the eye to escape when pressures get high. Congenital Glaucoma is hereditary, which means you can only get it if someone else in your family has it. If it doesn't run in your family, you are not at risk for being born with it.

More Glaucoma Facts:

Normal Tension Glaucoma, as an adult the optic nerve gets damaged, and causes the pressures to go up.