Reflections on sight loss - RNIB

Experience
A patient’s eye view:
AMD treatments
While sight-saving treatments for age-related macular degeneration were
approved only a year ago for NHS provision in England and Wales, Scots have
had longer to appreciate the benefits, following approval by the Scottish
Medicines Consortium in 2007. Journalist Dick Barbor-Might gives his own view
of the difference they can make to individual lives.
The first time I realised that anything was
wrong was when I poured a glass for my
partner, missed and ended up with a pool of
wine on the table. “Clumsy”, I said to myself.
“Could it be your eyesight?” queried our
philosopher friend Bill. So I took myself off to
the optician’s, from where I was referred to
Edinburgh’s Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion.
The eye tests, which are free in Scotland,
revealed that I had developed a condition
called macular degeneration.
Speedy and correct diagnosis is absolutely
essential with this condition. Nowadays this is
precisely what eye patients can expect to
receive, but it was not always like this. George
Kay, who chairs the Macular Disease Society in
Edinburgh, tells how back in 1959 he was
alarmed when the straight line he was cutting
in a slab of cake seemed to wobble. A few
weeks later, as he was walking home after his
night shift at the bakery, he found that he
could no longer see properly with his right
eye. Thereafter he made do with the left.
None of the doctors mentioned macular
degeneration. Thirty years later he mistook a
red traffic light for a green. He gave up
driving, but week by week the good left eye
deteriorated until the TV screen in the corner
was just a blur. Still the doctors said nothing
about macular degeneration.
48
Nowadays things are very different. In the
summer of 2006 the eye tests revealed that I
had both versions: dry in the left eye and wet
in the right. The right eye was past saving.
However, I still had 80 per cent vision in the
left. For the time being I could still make out
faces, still delight in a landscape, still watch
TV and still use the computer. I was given
excellent clear information and advised to do a
regular check on the Amsler grid. If and when
the lines and squares started to distort I
should go for an immediate eye test.
A year later, in July 2007, vision in the good
left eye began to rapidly deteriorate. This was
confirmed by the eye tests. Thanks to a
generous friend I prepared to go for a first
injection of a new drug, Lucentis, at a private
hospital in Newcastle. Then, just three days
before the Newcastle appointment,
Dr Armbrecht phoned up from the Eye
Pavilion to offer me a place on their newly
started Lucentis programme. The treatment
would be free, on the NHS.
For a specialist such as Dr Ana Maria
Armbrecht, Lucentis is a genuine
breakthrough, even more so than another
recent introduction, Macugen. She has
specialised in macular degeneration ever since
1997. Yet never before have she and her