Dry Eye 2023

 What a crazy year was in 2022! Now we are well into 2023 and the Dry Eye scene is worsening. 

I just saw a 23-year-old who came in with excruciating pain. No one was able to examine his eyes, check his vision or pressure. His eyes were beat red, in sharp contrast to his dark skin color.  It took a sedative, two rounds of anesthetic drops & 800mg of Advil, just for him to open his eyes wide enough to be sure he did not have inflammation in his eye or angle closure. 

When I was able to open his eyes, he had terrible keratitis in both eyes. His only crime was waking up in the morning...or was it?

"How many hours of screen time are you on usually." He laughed as his head was burried in his coat. "I mean, 10, 20, 24...?" Trying to ease his pain with a joke. 

"20!" he said. 

"No, I am serious," I said.

"20." 

"What do you do for work?" I asked.

"I work for a non profit."

"And you use your eyes for 20hrs a day at work?" I asked gasping given his pain score was 10/10.

"No....I am a gamer," he said almost apologetically. 

He knew. 
I knew. 

I knew that the keratitis he had which was causing knee-bending pain was due to his addcition to vido games. 

Thus when I went to my son's post-Cross Coountry pizza party for raising money for Assist Goals in Maryland and I saw all the girls on their phones, I had to tell them this story. 
They put their phones away in embarrassment. But for how long? 

We have to get smart phones out of kids as quickly and as long as possible. The horse is out of the barn but we can do it. We have to do it.