St Abbs, Scottish Borders
My Weekly Lupus Diary

Sjogren’s Causing Severely Dry Eyes

Hope you’re all having a great weekend!

I had a great birthday weekend in the Scottish Borders! The wolf didn’t behave, but I made the best out of the bad situation. Sadly, it did mean I was too unwell to celebrate my birthday stood on top of a Scottish summit. Instead, we had a lovely potter around the town of Peebles. It’s such a pretty town! If you haven’t been, I highly recommend a visit!

Thankfully, the following two days, the wolf gave me a break, and we could head on some lovely walks. On Sunday we climbed a little hill near Peebles, as I wasn’t feeling strong enough for any mountains. Then on bank holiday Monday, we did a lovely coastal walk in St Abbs. Another very beautiful place in the Scottish Borders! But even though I felt so much better, my body didn’t feel as strong as normal. What should have been two easy walks, felt hard!

Honestly, being ill on my birthday did upset me! One day of the year I would have liked the wolf to have given me a break! But hey, the wolf does what he wants!

Here’s a little photo dump of my birthday weekend in the Scottish Borders:

Cryotherapy

On the Friday before my birthday, I had my first lot of treatment on my verrucas. To be honest, I wasn’t quite expecting them to do it on the actual Friday. I thought I was going for a consultation. But no, my feet got blasted with liquid Nitrogen! So as you can imagine my feet were a bit sore to walk on afterwards! I was a little annoyed they had done it! Considering I was about to go away for the weekend, walking! But she promised me my feet would be fine for the weekend. And you know what, she was not wrong! Woke up Saturday morning, and my feet were absolutely fine!

In a few week’s time, I’ve got to go back for another session of cryotherapy. At least this time, I will be expecting it! Not sure how many sessions I will have to have, but at least now I’m on the road to getting these verrucas gone for good!

My Eyes

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed my vision become blurry. Then this week, my eyes became painful. Each day, the pain seemed to get worse. At first, I just put it down to tired eyes, but as the days went on, as soon realised something was quite right! It was the moment when I woke up in the morning, in pain with my eyes, struggling to read the messages on my phone. It was then I thought, this is not down to tiredness!

So I did the right thing and got an urgent appointment with the opticians. They were absolutely brilliant with me! The Optometrist gave my eyes a thorough examination. My prescription has changed a little, but thankfully not enough to warrant a new pair of glasses. He then put some drops in my eyes to test how dry they are. Basically, the verdict was, that my eyes are severely dry, and my eyelids are all inflamed. Hence why my vision is blurry, why my eyes are painful, and why I am sensitive to light!

Because of how dry my eyes are, the Optometrist has made a referral to the eye hospital. I did mention how I am already waiting for an appointment to see them about the eye tests I had done back in June. So now I’m waiting to see them about to separate problems with my eyes, thanks to the wolf!

So Frustrating!

It’s frustrating about my dry eyes! I had all this a few years ago. The eye hospital talked about surgery if I couldn’t get it under control, as dry eyes can be serious if left untreated. For anyone who doesn’t know, it can cause permanent eye damage, eye ulcers, infections, and in the worst-case scenario, blindness! So it can’t be ignored!

A few years ago, I managed to get my dry eyes under control so I didn’t need surgery. I have been using my eye drops the same amount ever since. So why this month, my eyes have decided to get worse, I do not know! However, I’m so glad I went to get my eyes checked when I did. If I didn’t, my eyes would have likely continued to get drier!

Now that I’ve been putting my eye drops in even more frequently than normal, my vision is slowly returning back to normal, and the pain in my eyes has disappeared, thankfully!

Heading Back To Scotland

That’s it from me this week! I’m off to Scotland (I know I’ve only just come back), this time for a two-week road trip next week. I’m hoping to head to the Isle of Arran for a few days, then onto Kintyre. Well, I say I hope to, it all depends on the ferries! There were two ferries running, but one got pulled out for service. So now our crossing has been changed onto the other boat, later in the day. But then yesterday, that boat was pulled out of service due to problems with the engine. So who knows where we are going to end up next week!

Oh, and I’ve spent my birthday money on something very exciting, which will be coming with me to Scotland! I’ve gone and brought myself a paddle board. So the days I am not well enough to walk, I am going to spend them days lying on the paddle board floating in the water, relaxing! Probably should stick to the Scottish Lochs over the sea! Otherwise, I might find myself on the Irish coastline!

Don’t worry I’ve got my wet gear sorted too for the Arctic waters up there! Full body wet suit, socks (yes you can get wet suit socks believe it or not), gloves, shoes, and a buoyancy aid just so I don’t drown! I’m fully prepared!

See you at the end of September!

Goodbye for now,

Emma

xox

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