Shingles eye sight

[craigbrown]

I was put in the hospital in January being diagnosed with HIV. I also had shingles on the left side of my face with no pain. Also a celulitus infection on my bottom lip. Also a staff infection throughout my entire body ( not MRSA ). After recovering enough in a week was released. Found a clinic to go to since I did not have insurance and was able to get on oral antibiotics and HIV meds. I started the HIV med Atripla in late February. My viral load went from 70,000 to 50 and cd4 from 6 to 50 in about a month. However at the beggining of March I went back into the hospital due to severly low potassium levels. ( I had also gone from about 150 lbs down to almost 110 over a period os about 2-3 months). Almost being unable to move my limbs.After having been in the hospital a couple days I started to get a severe pain behind my eye mostly throbbing and occasionally stabbing but persitent pain. My eyesight diminished during the week to the point now where I can only see light and dark blurry images. However after about a week and a half to two weeks the pain went away. I was started on Valcyte about 2-3 weeks after all this. I also had a blood vessel rupture in my eye towards the back making it almost impossible to see anything when I went to try and find out what was going on (Have been seen by three different optometry clinics). I Have also been using Predisonal 4-6 times a day and Cyclopentalate 2 times daily. I have pretty much come to my own conclusion that the HIV meds made the shingles virus surge back in my eye effecting the optical nerve and my sight. My question is... is there a possibility that the sight might come back or is my deduction probably correct and the vision is gone forever? What are the possibilities that this could surge up into the other eye or does the shingles tend to stay on the one side of the original effected side? Also the doctor who is seeing me thought I had been put on valcyte and didnt realize that I wasnt on any antibiotic when the pain initially started...would that have had any effect on the outcome?

[craigbrown]

Yes I am sorry I did mean opthalmologist and she is a retinal specialist. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my lengthy inquiry. I am being seen about every 4 weeks and have not been told anything definite. Is it hard to determine cause and treatment depending on the case?

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

An optometrist in not a medical MD physician. Hopefully you meant ophthalmologist an Eye MD physician that does medical and surgical eye care. You absolutely should be under the care of an Eye MD ophthalmologist, ideally a retina specialist and an infectious disease specialist.

You have a very serious problem. These cases are all unique and it is not possible to generalize to give you any reliable prognosis.

You will need to rely on your medical team.  Good luck.

JHC MD

JCH MD