Again. Just so many things that make me happy. Today I want to talk about two that also reiterate my belief that everything happens for a reason, and good comes from everything. I have always believed I was diagnosed with breast cancer in order to be part of the trial that would help prove there are indeed other solutions to killing breast cancer rather than chemo, radiation and surgery. Definitely not in all cases, simply because one cure does not work for everyone. But cryoablation, freezing the cancerous tumor to death, is definitely an option for many women who get regular mammograms and discover breast cancer early. My stories on my procedure and five years of cancer freedom have been spread far and wide and hopefully are making IceCure, the name of the company in Israel that created this means of curing cancer. Now this week, I learned that

, that incredible radiologist at Centra State Hospital in Freehold is concentrating on making the procedure better known now that five years of trial is successful and complete. The doctor was the professional who did my cryoablation and though I had not met him until about three weeks before he performed the procedure, we have been in touch and friends ever since. Hopefully now more women will hear about Dr. Tomkovich, will hear that Centra State has the courage to trial new trials and will take advantage of what cyroablation offers. I still say it was the easiest choice I ever made, because I always knew that even if it didn’t work, I could also opt for one of those other less palatable solutions. Now the same thing has happened since I developed aging macular degeneration, (AMD) the leading cause of blindness in people over 65. Annoyed no medical doctor or optometrist had ever advised me of how many people this disease affects and taking a simple capsule twice a day called AREDS, available any every drug store, could possibly help slow the process, I immediately began writing about it once I grew accustomed to getting those needles in my eye once a month. This week a learned the editor of a Health magazine e-mailed me to say she’s interested in my story and asked me to write it. So once again, hopefully, because I have AMD many others can learn more about it, learn what they can do to avoid or diminish the effects of it, and perhaps save their vision for years to come. Now that also makes me happy! I’ve had two not so terrific diagnoses in the last five years. Both times, my cases were a bit out of the norm. Because I’m a writer I have the ability to spread the word about them and possibly help others. And I am. And it’s working. Isn’t that enough to make anyone happy?

Well, I have now had six months of injections in my eye to help rid me of aging macular degeneration (AMG) The good news I have to say it has helped somewhat. The better news is that I have an ophthalmologist who won’t quit! If something doesn’t work, he simply moves on to something else.

For each of the six months I have received this monthly injection directly into my eye, the doctor has noticed some improvement. Darn terrific, considering at the onslaught, we both knew it was so serious he did not have any hope of making any improvement; he was simply making every effort to preventing it from becoming any worse. The AREDS-2 he advised me to start taking…again, so sorry no eye doctors or GP’s had ever recommended it to me in the past…..was not to help the eye that was too badly damaged. Rather, it is to stop the other eye, which also has AMD but the ‘dry’ variety…from getting worse. That, together with a far better diet heavy on green leafy vegetables, lots of fruit and olive oil and nuts, seems to be working. But back to the serious AMD. Over the past six months, while the doctor has seen improvement each month, ever so slightly, but nonetheless, improvement, it has not been that noticeable to me. The largest change, one I so welcome, is that I no longer see everything crooked. My criteria for the last half year has been the candles on the altar at church. At first there were 12 when there are really six, all of them decidedly taking a sharp lean to the left. Then I consistently started seeing only six candles, still askew. Then only occasionally were those candles leaning in. And now, I only ever see six candles and they are always standing straight up.

This month, the doctor informed me there had been no change, a sign to him the medication he was injecting had done all it could do. However, he added, if I’m game, he was interested in trying yet another medication, one he admittedly doesn’t use as much, one, which he said, could have harmful side effects, but one that offered promise. Would I try it? When I hesitated a bit over the “could have harmful effects” portion of what he said, he assured me whatever the detrimental effects, he felt confident he could correct them.

I’ve let this ophthalmologist inject a little needle in my eye, with me wide awake, alert and with my other eye open, every month for half a year. Of course I can trust him.

And while I have my trust in this doctor, my insurance company is another question. This particular medication, the doctor continued, isn’t covered by all insurance companies. Some won’t cover it at all, some will only over it as a last resort. Some will cover a portion of it. However, he said solemnly, it could cost $2,000 an injection. And injections could go on for several months. Think about that. In an age when we are giving money to people rather than offer them jobs close to home, when we are offering health care, even drivers licenses and voting rights to people who are not Americans, we still have pharmaceutical companies who are making drugs that cost $2,000 a dose. Does that sound American? Something we can be proud of?

For me, it has been wonderful. Besides a great doctor, I have a great insurance policy, thanks to my husband’s 40 years of hard work on the railroad. That company picks up what Medicare does not, and for me, that company and my policy are picking up the entire tab for this new magical drug.

I realize I’m fortunate; I’m grateful for so many people and things, not the least of which is living in an area where I can find outstanding doctors and having a hardworking husband who ensured I would be taken care of if he predeceased me, which he has. So I received this new injection, for the first time. The doctor and I will give it a second try next month. After that, who knows? But for now, things are looking much clearer, much brighter. And I’m grateful.

It has been six months since the ophthalmologist first told me I had advanced aging macular degeneration (AMD). At the time he told me he was hopeful he could at least stop it from making me completely blind in one eye, but he had no hope of making it any better. He would try, he said, with monthly eye injections, but he warned me not to expect miracles. Well, I’m now on a first name basis with St. Lucy, patron saint of the blind, and Dr. Guerriero is truly the answer to a prayer. That first injection, directly into my eye, wasn’t really even bad, given the doctor’s calm manner, incredible background and experience, and my praying my way through it. The second one was even better, especially when he said my eye had shown a very slight improvement! By the third, I felt like an experienced pin cushion, and he talked about possibly changing the medicine he was injecting. But he didn’t. I changed my diet, forgoing red meats for more salmon, tuna and sardines, thrilled the variety of nuts I loved were really great for eyesight, and started taking AREDS 2, an OTC medication filled with Vitamin C and E, zinc and copper. Enjoying more fruits and green vegetables was easy to do, particularly armed with the new recipe book my daughter had gotten for me from the AMG society and all the root vegetables and fruits my son had shipped to me. In the meantime, I continued to use the candles on the altar at church every morning as my barometer. In November and December, the six tall candles really looked like twelve tall candles to me. And everyone of them was bent over as if they were blowing in the wind. By February, there were some days that one or two of them looked straighter than the others, but not my much. In March, when I got my fifth shot, the candles were still crooked and the doctor was telling he once again he saw slight improvement, something that delighted him, I think as much as me. Then in the last two weeks, I noticed that every day…every day…every one of those candles..only six now…were standing straight and tall! So I was happy going into Dr. Guerriero’s office, and happier still after he saw me. He reminded me he never thought he could improve my degeneration, but he wanted to try. He reminded me he was going to changed medication a few months back, but had decided against it because he had seen that success, so stuck with the original. Every month, he told me this week, every month, he’s seen improvement! So he’s continuing the injections until I reach a plateau where I don’t show any more improvement. I was so happy to hear that…imagine being happy to have somebody stick a needle in your eye?…..I never asked me what to expect when I reach that plateau and he stops giving me injections. That’s a question I can ask at another time. So I’ve found an ophthalmologist who has decades of experience and an honest, not prideful, confidence in his ability. I’ve found an ophthalmologist who went into the field because he felt he could help people from going blind and appreciates how important sight is to the average person. Am I happy? Of course! I’m not yet blind! But I do still wish every one of my friends over 50, especially those with blue eyes, would ask their own general practitioner more about AREDS and AREDS2. It has a reputation and research that shows it helps reduce the onset of AMD if taken early enough. (Blue-eyed people seem to be more susceptible to AMD) I don’t know if it would have helped, I’ll never know. But I’m glad I found Dr. Guerriero.

For me, it was a frightening event that occurred overnight that led to a diagnosis of wet macular age-related degeneration (AMD). Because of my age, the diagnosis wasn’t unusual, but the suddenness was — and it took me by surprise. Apparently, blood vessels deep within my eye grew, then leaked or burst, causing a rapid loss of vision. For most, AMD is a slower, more easily tracked, gradual regression of sight.I woke up that morning, and it looked like it was raining, with heavy drops splashing against my window. But when I looked elsewhere, it was a sunny day. I rubbed my eyes and attributed it to not being quite awake, and I went about my day. The blurriness continued, that day and the next. By then I was frightened, upset, annoyed, and I called to make an appointment with my eye doctor. But because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was 5 weeks before I could get in to see anyone.In the meantime, at church, I noticed that where there used to be only four candles on a wreath near the altar, there were now eight. No, wait: There really were only four. But I didn’t know that until I closed my bad eye. The six candles at the back of the high altar looked like 12, and by the way, not one of them was straight. They all leaned considerably to the left. That scared me, as well.

The diagnosis Five weeks later, I saw my eye doctor and had the initial tests that showed that serious degeneration had already occurred. The diagnosis confirmed advanced wet AMD in my right eye and dry AMD (which fortunately isn’t as serious) in my left eye. The optometrist who did these tests immediately set up an appointment with the ophthalmologist and also explained that I’d need to immediately start getting injections in my eye to treat the wet AMD. The several days between receiving that information and my first appointment with the ophthalmologist were fraught with fear and anger. How could this happen to me, a healthy and active 84-year-old? How could it happen so quickly? How would I go on without being able to see out of one eye, and with dry AMD in the other? How much longer before I would be blind and not be able to see at all? I worried about writing first — my profession for 65 years. Driving. Going up the 16 outside steps to get into my apartment. Reading, a passion. Watching TV, a relaxation. I was angry that my life would change so much. And I was scared at the idea of getting needles directly into my eye.

My first shot The ophthalmologist allayed most of those fears during my first visit. He explained the problem, gently told me it could get worse, and while he probably couldn’t make it any better, it was worth a try. At least he felt confident he could halt or at least slow the advance of the degeneration. He jotted down the name AREDS2 and urged me to pick up a bottle at the pharmacy and take one capsule twice a day. In addition to my tears of fear and loss, this actually made me angry. If there was an over-the-counter medicine I could have been taking for years, why had my physician not told me about it? Why didn’t the optician, whom I saw regularly, tell me years before? I still live with that anger.But I agreed to the eye injection immediately. Any help would be a blessing. And it was. Putting aside the thought of a needle in my eye is all it took, since the procedure is quick, simple, painless, and apparently effective. First, the doctor covered my “good eye” to relax me, then numbed my right eye, and that was it. I didn’t feel the needle or medication being inserted. It’s a procedure which has recurred every month for the past 4 months now, but only after tests have been taken, measurements made, and results studied at each visit. Before the second injection, the doctor informed me there was no further damage and in fact, there was a very slight improvement.

New habits and routines I spent days studying what else I could do to help maintain my remaining eyesight in both eyes. My daughter ordered the American Macular Degeneration Foundation’s recipe book and told me to start trying a variety of recipes with vegetables and seafood that were new to me. My son sent me boxes of root vegetables, including beets, garlic, sweet potatoes, and squash, as well as tons of greens, all of which would be healthy changes to my diet and are known to be good for the eyes. I bought canned sardines (great with cream cheese on crackers as an hors d’oeuvres!), and I switched from the meat department to the seafood department in the market, with an accent on salmon and tuna fish. I learned I loved them all, and in fact, I eat so much seafood that now I’m beginning to believe I even swim better!I bought sunglasses, which help considerably whenever I am out in the sun, another suggestion from the ophthalmologist, and a new habit for me. I quit driving at night and discovered I had friends who were delighted to play Uber for me. I found that as long as I stayed really attentive, I could drive on roads that I am very familiar with during the day. I started watching TV programs on my computer, which was easier than the larger-but-more-distant TV screen in my living room. And because I can see up-close with my left eye, I’m fortunate to be able to continue my writing and research, as well as my reading, which are vitally important parts of my life. Those candles on the altar? They’re still crooked, but now I only see the actual number that are there. And I look at the candles as bowing down in thanks for being able to cope with the differences all of these changes have made in my life.

The takeaway I’ve adjusted to this new phase of my life. I have confidence in my ophthalmologist. I take AREDS2 twice a day. I’ve learned to wear sunglasses outdoors, which I suppose I should have always worn. Thanks to a combination of blurriness and the masks of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve become more attuned to people’s voices rather than facial features. I’ve even lost weight because of my new diet. And I swear, I definitely swim better.

If there is any benefit, at least for me, in having Aging Macular Degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in people over 65, it is the mandate to change a diet and look for new and different ways to prepare fruits and vegetables to keep them the most important part of your diet. The AMD Foundation’s Eat Right for Your Sight recipe book is full of terrific ideas for entrees, side dishes, soups and desserts as well as salads and healthy drinks. The book is available from the Foundation at Macular.org. Here’s a great recipe for Blueberry Frozen Yogurt full of those little blue marvels that are themselves filled with Vitamin C, fiber, manganese, and antioxidants that are all needed for healthy macula. Besides all that, it just tastes terrific. 3 Cups fresh blueberries 2 Cups plain Yogurt (Vanilla yogurt is even better) ½ Cup sugar ¼ t. vanilla Put them all together in a processor until smooth. Pour into 9X13 tray and freeze, stirring every hour about four hours, til it’s semi-firm in the middle. Pour it all in the processor again until smooth again. Serve and Enjoy.

One of the best things about eating an eye-healthy diet, and it shouldn’t come as any surprise, is how many other benefits there are when you change from lots of meats, potatoes, cheeses and the like, increase the greens and beans, and eat everything in moderation. Because of aging macular degeneration (AMD) and the fact I have to get monthly injections directly into my eye to keep it from getting worse, I have definitely changed my diet and found so many other benefits. Besides the ophthalmologist has seen slight improvement in my eye, when we were not expecting anything other than not having it get worse, over the past three months, I’ve lost weight, significantly lowered my cholesterol, and as a result, have even been taken off one prescription! All that in mind keeps me looking for great recipes in addition to the wonderful choices in Eat Right for Your Sight, the recipe book published by the American Macular Degeneration Foundation. On top of that, this week I saw Foodtown in Atlantic Highlands, on the shelf in its groceries department, now has plastic containers of chopped up mixed vegetables. They’ve always had the chopped onions, or onions and peppers, but now they’re also offering a mélange of chopped up cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, zucchini, celery, peas, beans and maybe more, not sure. So, for $5.27, I tried one and experimented with easy things. Making salmon salad for a sandwich spread, I used a can of salmon and a cup of the mixed chopped vegetables, tossed in mayonnaise to keep it together, and added a few herbs including pepper, basil and garlic. Sensational! Then I took the other half a container of the chopped veggies and blended them with a can of drained garbanzo beans, a few of those same spices, and a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil! Makes a great side dish at dinner. If you’d prefer a real recipe, though, try these garlic-lime porkchops from the Eat Right recipe book mentioned earlier. Whisk together: 2 gloves minced garlic, ½ t. pepper flakes, 1/3 cup EVOO, ¼ t. salt (I omit this) 1/t. black pepper, 2 Tablespoons each of chopped cilantro and chopped basil, and 1 t. fresh or frozen ginger. Put in 4 ½ inch boneless pork chops (about 1/1/2 lbs.) and let them marinate in the refrigerator a few hours or better yet overnight.. When ready, bring to room temperature, and grill about six minutes on each side. If you want perfection and use a meat thermometer, it should be at 145 degrees. Serves four, or two, and two to freeze to be heated up another night.

So it is now five months since I first agreed to let an ophthalmologist stick not one, but two needles in my eye. And I’ve let him do it once a month ever since. At the very beginning, it was downright frightening if that’s worse than scary. I don ‘t wear glasses, I cannot put drops in my own eyes without getting physically sick and I certainly don’t let anything near or in my eyes. Heck, I even object to how close the face mask comes to my eyes and am convinced an irritation I had a couple of weeks ago was the direct result of wearing the mask and breathing. So the idea of appearing in this doctor’s office every month to let him stick a needle in my eye was at first simply beyond comprehension. But I sat and considered. I talked to my daughter and son. I cried, I screamed, I ran around the house like a madwoman. I got out a lot of anger and angst. So then I could think a little more reasonably. Of course there was an alternative. I could simply say thanks, but no thanks. But there was no doubt about it. The Aging Macular Degeneration I had in one eye was at a fierce level as it was. The doctor explained he would not be able to cure that. Though it happened literally overnight, unusual but not impossible, it was really bad and would only get worse. Worse. That means make me see even less. Blindness. In one eye. Unfixable. For the rest of my life. Nope, I couldn’t live with that either. OK, Doctor, I’ll be there, I’ll be praying to St. Lucy the whole time, the patron saint of eyes and persons who are blind, and I will be praying that you, Doctor, have steady eyes, great eyesight, and have had a good night’s sleep and feel relaxed. OK, I’ll do it and commit to doing it every month you tell me to. Armed with all those prayers, all the self-confidence I could muster up, offering it all up to make up for the bad things I’ve done in my life, I ventured into the office for my first shot! Technicians do so much before you even get to see the doctor. They take pictures, dilate your eyes so they can check for everything from cataracts to glaucoma and anything in between, take measurements, have me sign that I agree to the injection and off I go from their several offices to the doctor. Even then I had to admit they all gave me confidence. They were pleasant and friendly, they acted like they knew what they were doing and they really liked their jobs. They even explained every step of everything they were doing when I said I wanted to know what was going on as we went along. Everybody doesn’t, they explained, but so long as you asked, sure, we’ll explain. By the time I got into the doctor’s office, complete with his desk and computer so he could review everything that had been done, I was slightly less tense. Sitting talking to him for a few minutes made me even less tense. By the time we got to his saying, “so, are you ready?” Yes, I was really ready. It’s a quick procedure, though there is time between the time he numbed my eye…of course with a needle…to ensure the numbing took. He covered my left eye with a gauze pad, whether to keep me from seeing what he was doing or to keep him from seeing sheer terror, I’m not sure. But in a way, it was a comfort. Like his technicians, at my request, he explained everything along the way. And that was it! He wiped my eye, complimented me on staying calm and told me he’d see me in a month. I went home, laid down for a few minutes simply to reassess what had happened, and to get my sight back to my new normal with the wearing off of the dilating drops and that was it. By the next day, it was a thing of the past. The second month was even better. Same routine, same technicians, same confidence in an eye surgeon who certainly is not only adept at his work but seems thrilled to help people. It got even better when he told me there was a slight improvement, something he liked but had not expected. That’s all I needed to hear to be certain I made my appointment for the third shot a month later. And so it went. The third visit also showed a slight improvement; heck, I was delighted in the fact nothing had gotten any worse. He could see from all the eye tests, but I also told me everything still looked cloudy, I couldn’t recognize peoples’ faces, (but I was getting better at voice recognition) and telephone poles, candles, fence posts, building columns, all looked crooked, bent towards the left. My friend in Utah who is an artist was outstanding help. Actually, without meaning to, she also made me feel very sheepish for my fears. She had AMD for years, she told me, but she continued to follow her dreams as the artist she is. Yes, she used a ruler some time to be sure her trees were straight, and yes, she covered branches of her trees with lots of leaves. And when her AMD gets worse, as she knows it will, she smiled and said she would just start drawing and painting flowers. She’s doing that now, and has some spectacular artwork for sale online all the time. The fourth visit was downright easy. I knew what was going to be happening, knew the doctor was so precise and careful, knew he would answer all of my questions, and knew it would be over in a second. Between the fourth and fifth visits, I began to notice a couple of other things. At Christmas time, the wreath on the altar with four candles looked like it had eight. The six tall candles at the top of the altar looked like 12 candles sometimes. The wreath was gone after the Christmas season, but the six candles still looked like 12 most of the time. By the fourth shot, I was only seeing six candles every day. Sure, they were still crooked, but here were only six. Only Six Crooked Candles. About a week before my fifth visit this week, I also noticed something else. One morning the candles were straight! Standing up there on the altar proud as they could be. The next morning, they were there again, tall, skinny white candles, everyone of them straight up. It happened every day so by eye injection day, I was really eager to go in and tell the doctor that even I could see improvement. He checked all the tests, checked all the charts, and there was no doubt about it. One more month, and one more Improvement. That shot that day actually even felt pretty good! Hours later, I kept an appointment to share cocktails with some good friends at the Proving Ground in Highlands. No, you’re never going to have perfect eyesight, the doctor told me. Yes, you are making some improvements because of the injections. And yes, we have been successful in halting any further damage so far. Yes, taking AREDS2 capsules once a day is a good thing, yes, your new diet heavy on greens, seafood, and olive oil and nuts is a good thing, and yes, having a positive attitude certainly appears to be helping. So yes, I’ll see you in another month for your six injection. And that works fine for me!

The optometrist called it macular degeneration and put me in shock! I had never even worn glasses! Thirty or more years ago, I had cataracts removed at a North Carolina medical facility while traveling on the road in our RV. We were volunteering with other RVers at a national wildlife refuge. Because of my squeamishness with anything to do with my eyes….dating back to an accident with a dog when I was five years old ….I couldn’t even put in my own eye drops, and went to a neighboring RV every day to have someone put them in for me. How could I deal with something like macular degeneration? Better I find out more about it, I reasoned. New words to me, new sign of aging I had to deal with. So I searched books, google, and medical journals. The macula is that little area, like a little film, right in the center of the retina. It’s the part that makes the difference between seeing details vividly and clearly as on a sunny beautiful day and seeing them blurry and like through a rain-soaked window. It’s the part that makes 20-20 vision and differentiates among colors. It’s full of little nerves and cells and is arguably the most important part of the eye. It lies flat against the back wall of the eye on a cushion of fluid. Like all body parts, as you age, that back layer begins to deteriorate, and it gets more difficult to recognize faces, colors, fine details in objects; it gets more difficult to read and drive. All the little messages the optic nerve gets from the macula aren’t getting there to be brought to the brain. That’s the degeneration part of it. It is the leading cause of vision loss in the world, in the United States, more than 10 million people are affected by it. That’s more than people with cataracts. Or glaucoma. Or the combination of people with cataracts or glaucoma. What’s more, it’s still called an incurable eye disease. That’s enough to make you sit up and take notice…(no pun intended) Now I’m starting to get angry. How can this happen to me, I asked an astonishingly calm and understanding optometrist. I get my eyes checked every year, in fact had them checked as late as six months before. I eat decently though not perfectly, but I do love all kinds of vegetables and eat lots of salads. I never wore glasses. I don’t know much about vitamins but I’m a healthy specimen, having overcome both a stroke and cancer in the last five years. I can’t be losing my sight! Once home from that initial appointment, I decided to become more knowledgeable before having the prescribed eye injection. So I started to research. I learned there are two primary types of aging macular degeneration, “wet” and dry.” Dry isn’t quite as serious and is more common accounting for about 85 to ninety percent of the cases. The other 10 to 15 percent are wet. My degeneration was wet, the optometrist had said. He explained that that fluidy base the macula rests on is made of liquid and blood, and in ‘wet’ degeneration, the blood cells burst apart and start shoving up through that film, blocking its mission. That’s when the real trouble starts. It doesn’t seem like anyone, including the Macular Degeneration Foundation, which is loaded with information and assistance, knows precisely what causes all of this. For sure, both heredity and the environment are involved. Not much funding is put into the research of this disease so other causes have not yet been determined. Like so many other diseases, smoking is most likely a factor, some experts saying it doubles the risk of AMD (aging macular degeneration) It appears it is most likely to appear after age 55, affects white people more than other people of color, but genetics…whether there’s a family history, seems to be the largest risk. I wasn’t sure if that is a factor for me. My father died at 48, and while my mother was never diagnosed with it, I knew her vision wasn’t perfect several years before she died at age 95. But I could rule smoking out. I never did. Studies also show, that as the baby boomer generation ages, if scientists don’t come up with more prevention or treatment measures, age-related macular degeneration is going to reach epidemic proportions in ten years. Baby Boomers. Those kids born between 1946 and 1964. The “no known cure” part of the information I was gathering was upsetting. But the idea of having eye injections to help, or at least attempt to halt the rapidity of the degeneration, seemed like the only option. I was thrilled the schedule for that procedure had been moved up by two weeks. I wanted to meet the ophthalmologist I was going to let stick a needle in my eye. But I wanted to do some research on him first.