Odd Side Effects

I had my six monthly check up for my glaucoma today. I seem to be developing a strong aversion to the fields test machine they use at the hospital, the eye nurse did her best to be reassuring but I my stress levels rose as I was doing the test. It makes me feel claustrophobic and I find the beeps and whirling unsettling, which makes it harder to do the test which means it takes more time and so I have to listen to more bleeps and whirls and stick my head into a machine that makes me feel claustrophobic for longer and so it goes in an unvirtuous circle.

After the field test and a quick and dirty eye test I saw the consultant. I immediately had to fess up to have been bad about using my eye drops recently, erm like not actually have taken them for the last *cough* two and a half months. Anyway I didn't get slapping from the consultant but after he checked the pressure in each eye he asked me how pregnant I was. Then he spent a while consulting his bumper big book of medicines which probably did not give him much assurance. He told me that as the pressure in each eye was just borderline high that it would be best to carry on without treatment for the moment and he would check the pressure again in about ten weeks time.

It's good that the pressure in the eye seems to have dropped for now, because as far as I am aware there aren't any recommended treatments for glaucoma that have been checked for side effects in pregnancy, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily unsafe it's just they do not have evidence to say that they are definitely safe. And that's because most glaucoma sufferers are far older than I am and there isn't really a need for checking against pregnancy. The first consultant I saw back when my glaucoma was diagnosed told me this when I told him that we were hoping to start a family once we were married.

Hopefully next time I will not have to stick my head into the fields machine. And the time after next Simon will have to look after Junior I don't think he'll complain too much unless he's stuck in a meeting.