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Making it easier for doctors to examine my eyes
Hi Dr. Hagan - hope you are doing well.
I have had eye exams my whole life so have a great deal of practice in doing what is necessary. Despite this, I have always been aware that I am a "difficult" patient to examine. Because of my history (aphakia in both eyes due to congenital cataracts removed late with some complications), I have very small pupils which dilate extremely poorly, and I also have nystagmus.
Is there anything I can do to try and calm the nystagmus down a bit for visual field tests and slit-lamp examination? Would giving my eyes lots of rest beforehand help?
As regards dilation, they now usually give me two doses of tropicamide (I think at a reasonably high concentration) with 15-20 minutes between doses, and this seems to help a bit, but my pupils are nowhere near as large as I feel they'd ideally like them to be.
I suspect I'm doing all I can and that any other "tricks" would have become apparent by now, but just thought it worth asking. In the light of my recent retinal problems, I'm keen to make the job of my excellent but perhaps rather long-suffering consultants as easy as I possibly can.
I have had eye exams my whole life so have a great deal of practice in doing what is necessary. Despite this, I have always been aware that I am a "difficult" patient to examine. Because of my history (aphakia in both eyes due to congenital cataracts removed late with some complications), I have very small pupils which dilate extremely poorly, and I also have nystagmus.
Is there anything I can do to try and calm the nystagmus down a bit for visual field tests and slit-lamp examination? Would giving my eyes lots of rest beforehand help?
As regards dilation, they now usually give me two doses of tropicamide (I think at a reasonably high concentration) with 15-20 minutes between doses, and this seems to help a bit, but my pupils are nowhere near as large as I feel they'd ideally like them to be.
I suspect I'm doing all I can and that any other "tricks" would have become apparent by now, but just thought it worth asking. In the light of my recent retinal problems, I'm keen to make the job of my excellent but perhaps rather long-suffering consultants as easy as I possibly can.
No there is nothing you can do that will help the nystagmus In some people when they look in a certain direction the nystagmus slows (this is called the null point) but most people don’t have it. Best to just work on calming yourself and trying to follow your eye MDs directions.
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OK thanks for that. I suspected as much, but just thought it worth asking.
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