CZ

Hi! I’m a 24-year-old living in Toronto. It has been over two years since my life got flipped upside down. It all started with dry eyes that got progressively worse – and FAST. I was in the middle of doing my master’s degree at the time. My eyes were so uncomfortable (scratchy, burned, irritated) that I considered dropping out of school. It was incredibly hard studying on the computer, and it was even getting difficult sleeping due to the burning pain at night. I was growing extremely depressed and felt completely alone as I never heard of any other 20-something year old going through something like this! 

I saw 2 optometrists early in my journey who diagnosed me with dry eyes, but they said it was mild and it would go away. Little did I know, it did not go away. It got worse and worse.  2 months after my dry eyes started, I went to see a dry eye expert that diagnosed me with severe dry eyes with a tear break-up time of 0 seconds. I then started dry eye treatments such as Restasis and IPL. I spent thousands of dollars – money I saved up from previous internships.

However, even though my clinical signs of dry eyes were improving, my eyes felt worse. I did not feel better, and in fact, it felt worse than before. Even though my tear breakup time increased to a 6-7, I was still using artificial tears every 30 mins and feeling a lot of discomfort and pain. My optometrist believes I have hypersensitive corneal nerves (under the Corneal Neuralgia umbrella), which causes me to feel more severe pain than what is expected. Unfortunately, the corneal neuralgia diagnosis cannot be confirmed locally as the diagnosis tool (confocal microscope) is not available in Canada.

So, I decided to fly to Boston to see Dr.Hamrah – an expert in corneal neuralgia. I learned from my peers that OHIP is supposed to cover any out-of-country medical expenses for services and treatments not available in Canada. I applied for OHIP coverage and was surprisingly denied! This came as a shock to me, since this meant that OHIP did not believe I had this extremely debilitating condition. I ended up flying to Boston to see Dr.Hamrah anyways. The appointment cost over $3000 USD. But guess what? He confirmed the diagnosis of corneal neuralgia through the confocal microscope and my ocular symptoms. Since then, I started using 50% serum tears and lotemax to heal the nerves in my eyes. And I’m finally improving symptomatically for once. 

Overall, getting dry eyes and corneal neuralgia changed my life. I managed to graduate from my Master’s program (although barely), but was forced to skip writing an important professional exam (CPA Exam for being an accountant) that I was prepping for the last 2 years. I was originally planning to start working at my dream job as a consultant at a large management consulting firm in downtown Toronto starting Sept 2021 – but of course I had to push my start date to 2022, or maybe never. I may have to consider a career change in case my eyes do not get better. After 14 months in eye hell, I have spent almost $20,000 on eye treatments and products. This amount of money spent on medical care is virtually unheard of in Canada. I am lucky that I have the means to afford all this, but I know there are many people in Ontario that may not be able to afford the cost. 

I truly hope that one day, dry eyes and corneal neuropathy will be more widely recognized in the ophthalmological community in Ontario, with easier access to confocal microscopes, easier access to treatments, and treatments that are covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.