![]() Throughout the ordeal, I just kept thinking that things would get better and my eyes just needed to heal. I was in seventh grade at the time and had been out of school since the middle of December. My vision remained the same and never improved. I continued to see my doctor weekly for monitoring. On February 7 th, I was admitted for surgery again to have a spinal shunt implanted that would hopefully help drain the fluid more and prevent this from happening again. Within that week, I basically went from 20/20 vision to what I have now-20/800+ and lost a portion of my color perception as well. By that Friday, the 10 th, my vision had declined so much that the doctors decided to do the same procedure on the other eye. The surgery was intended to drain excess spinal fluid directly off of my eye. Up until this point, my vision was still 20/20, but I was still seeing double unless I closed one eye. 7 th, I had my first nerve sheath decompression performed on one eye. As you may imagine, this was quite a shock and a bit of a whirlwind of activity and emotions for me and my family. Over the next three days, I had four spinal taps and countless examinations. Apparently, I had a spinal fluid build up that was causing the pressure headaches and affecting my vision. I was diagnosed with a condition called Pseudo Tumor Cerebri which basically means false tumor on the brain. I had another couple of checkups that afternoon there, an MRI, spinal tap, and was admitted to the hospital that evening. He then proceeded to refer me to a neuro-ophthalmologist at the University of Utah Medical Center. What? His comment was completely unexpected as we didn’t’ even realize he suspected something of that nature. He ended up sending me for a CT scan and later announced to us that it wasn’t a tumor. On January 2 nd, (a Thursday) after offices reopened and things got back to normal with the new year, my mom took me to her eye doctor for a checkup. I even went to a chiropractor a few times to see if there was some kind of pinched nerve causing all the pain and double vision. ![]() I remember going Christmas shopping with my mom and actually lying down under the clothing racks in the store while she looked at things because I felt so terrible. ![]() I was pretty miserable over all of the holidays and things continued to get worse. My mom took me to see our pediatrician and he passed it off as flu-like symptoms and said just to rest and drink lots of liquids. Over Christmas break, I started experiencing prolonged double vision and began to have terrible migraine-like headaches and pain down my shoulders and back. Up until that time, I had been fully sighted– 20/20 vision. I lost my sight at the age of twelve due to an unexpected allergic reaction to tetracycline, an antibiotic that I’d been exposed to at various times in my early life. ![]()
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