Jenks Eye Doctor : Basic Eye Exams
Kyle Tate: Welcome to Eyecare Insights with Dr. Kyle Tate of Insight Eyecare, your Jenks eye doctor. Today we are in our series about dry eyes. If you’re having any symptoms of dry eyes, burning, stinging, or fluctuating vision, you should be looking for a Jenks eye doctor. Reach out to us at Insight Eyecare. We treat patients of all ages, from newborn babies to great, great grandparents. We offer everything from basic eye exams, contact lenses of all types and complexities, eye injuries. We treat pink eyes, dry eyes, many, many other eye diseases.
Insight Eyecare is located one mile off the Creek Turnpike at Highway 75 and 117 near the Glenpool Walmart. Located within the clinic is a large optical boutique with over a thousand frames to meet all wants and needs. We partner with the finest and most technologically advanced lens labs to give you the best vision possible out of your glasses. Our team at Insight Eyecare wants to be your Jenks eye doctor for all your eye care and eye wear needs.
Today we’re on Part Two of our dry eye series discussing what are the symptoms, signs, long-term problems dry eye might cause. A lot of the stuff here is simple. It’s stuff that people experience every day. Some of it is not things that you’d expect to have or that a dry eye would cause. I’m pretty excited about this today, and once again, if you’re looking for a Jenks eye doctor, reach out to us. If you’re noticing any of these things that we talk about today, reach out to us. We’re a Jenks eye doctor here to help you guys out and improve patients’ lives.
What are the symptoms of dry eyes? And what are the signs? First off, it’s important to understand what are symptoms and what are signs. Symptoms are what the patient experiences, such as red eyes, burning eyes, stinging vision, gritty eyes, fluctuating vision. Those are all symptoms that patients feel. Signs are things the doctor’s seeing. A lot of these will have scientific terms, and I’ll try and explain. Signs would be things like damage on the front surface of the eyes. Signs would be things like the eyes being red, the eyes not having the nice, smooth mucus layer that they should, the tear film not there in the proper amount or type, and glands not functioning well, not flowing well, or even what we call atrophy, which is cell death.
Let’s first talk about the signs. This is probably one of the most important things, because this is what the patient experiences. A lot of the common signs of dry eyes, we see in almost half of our patients. It may not always mean the eyes are dry, like dry eyes can be an itchy eye. Well, itchy eyes can also be from allergies. It can also be from irritation on the eyelids. Itchy eyes can present in numerous different things.
Let’s just laundry list out the symptoms, so we know what all we’re dealing with. The symptoms that a patient can experience are red eyes, burning eyes, gritty eyes, stinging eyes, vision that fluctuates from moment to moment, vision that’s worse at the end of the day, or even upon awakening, vision can be blurry from a dry eye. Dry eye can also cause what’s called a ghost image. A ghost image is almost a double vision. When you’re looking at something, and you don’t see two complete separate images of it, but you see one just near it that may be not as dark or not as easy to see, that’s ghost image. Usually something like this, blinking will help out.
Another symptom that patients experience from dry eyes is blurry vision when driving at night. Many times a day when people come to us as their Jenks eye doctor, they’re complaining that, “When I drive at night, I don’t feel as safe. You’ve got those cars with the weird blue headlights. When a car’s coming at me, and we’re in a dark area, I’m gripping the wheel really tight, and just holding my breath until they pass, because I don’t know where they are on the road.” That is not something you should be experiencing. If you’re feeling that, seeing that, if you notice you’re holding your breath a little bit when you’re driving at night, come see us. As your Jenks eye doctor, we can help out.
There’s treatments for that. It may be a tuneup in your glasses. It may be a dry eye. It may need a prescription drop to use while driving. Not feeling safe to drive is not something we should experience when we are going down the road. We want to be safe driving, comfortable with our vision driving, whether you’re driving by yourself, or whether you’re trying to keep family, you got kids in the car, safe. Or just being safe with the person coming at you. You’d hate to be gripping that steering wheel, and you’d be the one crossing the line. If you’re noticing any of that stuff, come see us.
Let’s talk about the symptoms of vision change, because this is one of the annoying parts. It’s not fun having your eyes not feel great during the day, but when it affects your vision, it’s a huge quality of life concern.
A quick story. A few weeks ago, my wife and I were actually kidless for a moment. We have two young children right now, and they were at my mother’s for the night having a slumber party. We woke up and watched a movie. Right after we left to go pick up the kids, and I had been staring at the movie screen all day, and my vision was extremely blurry. I had those ghost images. It was hard to see. It was bright out. I was squinting. Just putting a drop in didn’t help out. That helps support our facts that dry eye’s not just treated by a drop. Yes, it can help, but if your eyes get dry enough, there’s actually damage on the surface of the eye, and that’s what happened to me that day.
The vision signs that we watch with dry eyes, vision that blurs first thing you wake up in the morning, that can be due to things like sleeping with a fan, where you’re eye’s not completely closed when you sleep. Those are actually easy fixes to change. Some of the other different ones, blurry vision just all day long, that can be a little more complicated like we just talked about with my story. Blurry vision at the end of the day is very common when you’re on the computer a lot, when you read a lot, or even just a certain type of dry eye will cause that.
If you’re experiencing any type of vision changes, and you’ve maybe been to another eye doctor and got new glasses, but that didn’t help out, come see us at Insight Eyecare. We are your Jenks eye doctor, and we can help treat and identify these things.
Let’s now focus a little bit on what are some of the long term problems from dry eye. Besides the quality of life that the symptoms that we’ve seen, the signs of dry eye that can cause these long-term problems are easily seen in an eye exam. We can see the volume of fluids not there enough. We can see that the consistency of fluid, maybe there’s not enough mucin from that type of gland, or there’s not enough oils, because those are the three things of dry eye. They need to have mucins, oils, and fluids. If they’re not in the right balance, that’s when all the signs and symptoms of dry eyes come into play. We can use different methods in the clinic to help look at this, and this is something we’ll talk a little more, but these exams for dry eye are very simple.
A lot people have fear of going to the doctor, but with dry eye, it’s a very simple exam, takes five to ten minutes, just with a microscope. There’s not anything, any drops that burn or sting the eyes. You don’t have to be dilated just for dry eyes, but it is a chronic condition that’s ongoing that we have to watch. Because it’s chronic, we also have to think about the long term effect. Commonly I’ll see a patient, and I’ll see signs of the eyes being dry, and they won’t have any symptoms yet, and that’s when we have to have that candid conversation of, “Okay, I’m seeing some things that I have concerns about. We need to treat this before it goes down the line.”
Let me give you a little scenario, patient just like that. Let’s say we’ve got a 30-year-old male in the clinic, and he’s in for his eye exam. He doesn’t need any glasses, sees great, wife sent him in to get the health of his eyes checked, or he just made the appointment on his own. We see red eyelids, we see a little bit of crusting during the day on the eyelids, because that shouldn’t be happening. The eyes are a little redder than they should be. Then when we pull down the eyelid, and with our microscope we see that his glands are inflamed. They’re not producing the right types of oil, so right then we know okay, he has dry eyes.
Let’s say this patient, we talk to him, and he’s like, “No, I see great. My eyes are great. I have no problems. I’m just here to get my eyes checked out. I need just to know they’re healthy.” Well, now the discussion has to change, because we’re not worried about getting his quality of life improved right then. We’re actually now worried about 10, 15, 20 years down the road. If those glands are not producing well, if they’re chronically irritated or inflamed, that means those glands are going to atrophy over time. Once again, atrophy means die. His glands will die, and eventually, whether that’s at 20 years down the line when he’s 50, when he’s 60, 70, eventually he’s going to be left with a permanently dry eye that is much, much worse than anything he’s experiencing today.
This can be hard to explain to patients when they haven’t ever experienced anything before, so as your Jenks eye doctor, we’re here to help out. We’re here to look at you for the long term, to make your quality of life as best it can.
Once again, if you’ve experienced any of these symptoms, please reach out to us at Insight Eyecare. Our mission is to improve every life at every encounter. That means we want all of our patients to have healthy and comfortable eyes with the clearest vision possible to view and enjoy your life. When you think you need a Jenks eye doctor, come see us at Insight Eyecare. Our welcoming staff, state of the art facility, advanced eye care diagnostic equipment, eye glasses boutique, and the thousands of contacts that we have in stock, will meet the needs of any patient.
As your Jenks eye doctor some of the common diseases that we treat include nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, cataracts, glaucoma, dry eyes, allergies, foreign material removal, macular degeneration. Bring us your red, gritty, sandy, scratched, burning eyes, and let us help. As your Jenks eye doctor, we want to take care of you. We want you to be happy. We want you to have the best life possible. That means not having dry eyes and permanent problems from it.
Thanks guys. Have a great day. God bless.
