In The beginning of November 2018, I woke up with my eyes feeling funny. My Mom brought me to a walk in doctor because we figured it was pink eye. The doctor said I had viral pink eye and put me on the first of many eye drops. This is where my journey begins.
After 10 days of doing the eye drops, my eyes were only getting worse. My eyes burned, hurt and were extremely sensitive to light. So off to my pediatrician (who I love!!!) we went. She took a look and told mom we needed to fast track our way to the ophthalmologist. The very next day we went.
It seemed like the longest appointment of my life! He looked at my eyes, he put more drops in, he tested my pressure and he looked at my eyes more. He put some more drops in and then we waited. He looked at my eyes even more! He was rattling off numbers to his assistant and she quickly typed them into a computer. After he was done, they turned on the lights and said the phrase that changed our lives. “Caitlyn has uveitis”. Wait? What??? That’s a Very hard word to say, and for my little brain to understand. Mom and dad didn’t understand it either but began to ask a long list of questions. He told us that we needed to go to another doctor and he had already made an appointment for us.
Over that weekend, my mom started her never ended research. Trying to figure out what this was and how to fix me. On Monday we went to the uveitis specialist. She did all the things the last ophthalmologist did and looked some more. She validated my diagnosis and started me on even more eye drops. I took one drop of steroids in each eye 4 times a day and had to dilate my eyes every morning.
The doctor also spoke to us about needing to see ANOTHER doctor. We went to a rheumatologist. She checked me out, bent my legs, pressed on my tummy and asked a million questions! Then she said I need to have A LOT of bloodwork done. Man, this was starting to get annoying. Just fix my eyes! Why so many appointments? We did all my bloodwork and found out that I do not have an autoimmune disease and that my Uveitis is idiopathic. Great news? Right?
10 days later we went back to the specialist. We got good news! It was starting to clear up and we could taper off the medicine. That lasted for a few weeks. But January 1, 2019 I woke up to the pain and redness back. This was less than a week from stopping all my medicine completely. So, we were back to all the drops but this time every hour for the steroids and twice a day to dilate my eyes. And now adding naproxen to help control the inflammation.
We went through the whole process again. Specialist visits, looking at my eyes for what felt like hours, eye drops, tapering off the steroids and more visits. Again, great news! Things were looking good. But in February 18 it was back! Off to the specialist we went. This time it got real! She said the treatment plan we are in was not working. She said we needed to start a new treatment plan and add more medicine. Mom asked me to wait in the waiting room while they talked. I knew this couldn’t be good. After a while they called me back in. We left that day with more prescriptions and a lot more questions and fears.
Tomorrow I will start my first dose of methotrexate. I’ll keep you posted 😘
A Girl Living With Uveitis 