Looking after your eye-health – Mandy’s Story

Looking after your eye health is essential.

Mandy was a patient who came through to us for an urgent eyecare appointment earlier this year and she has kindly allowed us to share her story to emphasize the importance of eye health awareness and how important is it to get regular sight tests.

This is Mandy’s story:

From a young age Mandy had been diagnosed with a left amblyopic eye, which means her vision never fully developed and unfortunately always remained very weak, so she continues, to this date, to rely on her right eye as the good eye to see and drive.

Back in April this year, Mandy was referred to us from the urgent eyecare service due to symptoms of headaches and floaters she had been experiencing for the past 4 weeks, as well as, a shadow in the inferior peripheral vision of her RE for last few weeks which had stayed stable.

Initially, Mandy thought nothing of it and thought it will subside on its own and carried on with her busy lifestyle. She thought it must be related to long time usage of the screens or stress. As time went on, she started to suffer from more severe headaches and an increase in black floaters in her vision. When she started seeing a shadow, like a reflection of her own nose, she found something was not right. That’s when she called the urgent eyecare service who referred her to Clearsight Opticians. The Optometrist did all the checks to further see what is the cause of her symptoms and quickly discovered a superior retinal detachment in her right eye. Luckily the detachment was diagnosed as the fovea on, which means the part responsible for her central vision and fine detail still remained intact, but, was very close to detaching. A referral was sent immediately to the eye hospital bearing in mind her left eye is a longstanding weak eye.

If Mandy hadn’t escalated further on her symptoms and this had not been noticed quickly by the Optometrist, she could have lost her sight and also her independence.

“This is why your eyes are very important and any changes should never go unnoticed. It was only the quickness and professional service of the Opticians who really saved me from blindness. Your eyes are just as important in your health than everything else so if you think something is not right however small it may seem please do something about it, I am so grateful I did.”