Some time ago during my training I spent time with an eye surgeon in Philadelphia who had an odd way of getting his non compliant patients to take their glaucoma medications.  ”Cover your eyes”, he would say, “Now, what do you see?”  ”Nothing” was the usual reply. “Well, that’s what you are going to see if you don’t take your drops!” And he would shove a prescription in their hand and point to the direction of the pharmacy.  Blunt yes - but effective.

The lesson I learned was not to take my eyes for granted.  He got me to realize that even though the human body is an engineering marvel with the ability to regenerate tissue it can’t regenerate new eyeballs.  Like most youth I took my vision and my health for granted.  Until science advances a bit more and it surely will,  we only have one pair of eyes. Damage from glaucoma is normally irreversible, it is also preventable. Glaucoma is one of those silent diseases like hypertension, cancer, heart disease, etc., we don’t know its there until something happens or we see our doctor and get tested. That’s right, the patient doesn’t feel anything, see anything or sense anything different until the disease has significantly advanced. Fortunately, if found early with routine examination, it’s progression can be halted and future deterioration slowed or stopped altogether. But the damage done is rarely if ever reversible.

In addition to your optometrist checking for glaucoma there are many other diseases that may show up during a routine eye exam: diabetes, hypertension, brain tumors, lupus, sarcoidosis, MS, hypercholesterolemia, syphillis, stroke just to mention a few.

How is this possible? The eye has a transparent membrane called the cornea which allows light to pass through to the retina. Because of this ability which is not present anywhere else on the body, we can look directly at the blood vessels and nervous system. How cool is that!  I have to admit looking into my patients eyes is one experience that never gets old.

So the next time you get that call from your eye doctor, remember that there is more to an eye exam than 20/20.

Unfortunately, we humans only have one pair of eyes.  And these eyes need to stay healthy for many, many years.  With science now making it possible for people to live longer, keeping your eyes healthy and in good shape is even more important than ever.  If you wear Contact Lenses you probably know how much of a pain they can be.  Maybe you’ve even had some eye infections, eye irritations, etc. from dirty lens cases.  There’s a simple solution to this problem.  Every three months, at least, you should replace your Contact Lens case with a new one. The time and money you spend now, replacing your case every three months, will be much less than if you have to see a Doctor for an Eye Infection down the road. There’s also something else you can do.  In between case replacements, make sure you disinfect and clean your case by using a little of your Contact Lens solution.  Rinse the case out with the solution and then let it air dry.  This will keep out all the nasty bacteria that might grow in there.  As a result, you’ll be less likely to get an eye infection.  So, ask yourself, when was the last time you changed your Contact Lens case? That long huh?

Clean, Healthy Contact Lenses

Many of us at Simon Eye Associates have been asked the age old question, what’s better, Contact Lenses or Glasses? And although the answer may seem very personal, one Musician may help clear that up for you.   The below article was published in the London Telegraph’s online edition Telegraph.co.uk.   It was written by concert pianist Stephen Hough.  It proves that whether you’re in Wilmington, Delaware, or London, England, people have the same problems with both.

I wear contact lenses most of my waking hours - minus 4.00 in both eyes.  It all started at the Juilliard School with a student recital I gave there at Paul Hall in the early 1980s.  I was wearing my usual nerdy glasses and was working up a sweat in the last movement of Prokofiev’s 6th sonata.  The last furious page tore along to the concluding, hammering chords: da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-DA!  I flung my head back on the last ‘DA‘ and my glasses flew back off my head, landing on the floor about ten feet behind me.  It was a gesture which could never have been planned, a perfect moment of extra-musical drama … except that, after a few princely bows, I had to get down on my hands and knees like a charlady, crawling along in search of them.  I quickly located them, shakily threaded them into place behind ears and on nose, and got up to walk off the stage to a mixture of applause and roars of laughter.  But then I realized that there was only one lens in the frame, the other had popped out with the impact.  So my first curtain call began with me bending down yet again to reclaim the missing but thankfully intact glass.

There was no repeating that humiliation, I had to get myself some contact lenses - and what a tremendous liberation they were when playing the piano.  No longer did I steam up or slip down - or shoot back.  But it’s not good to wear lenses all the time, and particularly for the first hour of the day when the eyes are dry and oxygen-deprived.  And I never wear them on flights longer than an hour.  So this morning I was cleaning my glasses in preparation for my 2-hour flight to Minneapolis from Nashville when they just broke.  The nylon thread invisibly holding the lower part of the lens in place snapped off and they were useless.  So my first task in Minneapolis tomorrow is to buy some new ones.  I wonder what style to go for?  These perhaps …

Do These Glasses Work For You?

A new ubber-trendy designer has hit the market and hit it big.  Her name is Vera Bradley and until a few weeks ago I had no idea who she was.  All I knew was that I kept seeing these women with brightly colored handbags and later I saw those same patterns printed on Eyewear.  So who is Vera Bradley? And how did she make it so big so fast? Well actually, “she” hasn’t made it big that fast, I just wasn’t paying attention.  And “she” is not the founder of the company and hasn’t made it big at all.  Kind of like the Victoria’s Secret question, is there a Victoria? Well, there isn’t.  But there is a Vera Bradley.

The company was founded in March 1982 by Patricia Miller and Barbara Bradley Baekgaard.  Wait, who’s Vera Bradley then? Vera Bradley is the mother of co-founder Barbara Bradley Baekgaard.  Ah that’s cute, naming a company after your mother.  The two women founded their company after waiting in an airport for a flight.  They both noticed a definite lack of feminine looking luggage and the rest is history.  Vera Bradley has now grown into a $100 million dollar a year business.  It’s almost impossible to walk down the street and not see a Vera Bradley handbag and most recently, Vera Bradley Eyewear.  The brand also includes a Home Collection and of course, a Travel Collection with luggage as feminine as anything we’ve ever seen.  Simon Eye Associates is proud to carry Vera Bradley Eyewear and we’re hoping the Vera Bradley brand continues to grow.

Vera Bradley Eyewear

Don’t let vision problems stop you from reading the new Dan Brown book, which was released today, The Lost Symbol, or any of your favorite books for that matter. If you have extreme trouble while reading and you have tried every solution your Optometrist has given you without luck, there is a new device on the market which may be able to help. It’s called the MonoMouse and is made by Bierley Associates. The MonoMouse looks like a mouse you’d use with your computer, though it is slightly larger. The MonoMouse is placed over the page and an electronic eye reads the text and relays it to your television instantly. What you see is an enlarged version of the text on the page.

The MonoMouse sells for $300, which may be a little bit too much money for some people. But, for those that miss reading this may be the perfect solution.  For more information please visit the Bierley Associates website.

MonoMouse

The below is an article first published in the Philadelphia Inquirer and then later picked up by UPI. Does this remind anyone else of that movie Minority Report? Things are getting interesting in this world when science starts to imitate art.

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 9 (UPI) — A South Jersey man says his eyesight is returning, weeks after doctors at Wills Eye Institute in Philadelphia implanted electrodes behind his left eye.

Michael Adler, 49, began losing his sight as a child, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday. Recently, when he was sitting in church he saw what he described as an odd white glow — which turned out to be an open hymnal.

“Every day, I can make out more than I could the day before,” he told the newspaper after tests at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s very weird trying to get used to it.”

The type of surgery Adler went through has been tried on 32 people who have lost their eyesight to a severe type of retinitis pigmentosa.

The implants bypass damaged eyes and send signals to the brain.

“It’s sort of like, all the phone lines are in place and you didn’t have the phone,” said Julia Haller, the head ophthalmologist at Wills. “This replaces the phone.”

So far, the surgery does not restore normal sight. Adler sees low-resolution black-and-white images lacking in detail — his daughter’s face shows up as a white oval.

But researchers say great advances have been made in the past few years, and even greater progress is likely in the near future.

Science Imitating Art