Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion #1 AS Web Support Group steroid drops

Hey ,All.Its a gorgeous saturday here in Austin The biggest fear,another iritis episode is looming behind my eye
ready to explode. My last one over a year ago. Total nightmare. Trying to nip this one in the bud ,no starch
Its held off for 3 days but I can feel it building strength
I have drops and dialators stored in fridge. exper. still good. Im wondering if I should go ahead and dose myself and get to my eye doc first of the week. I think nsd
has held it off in the past perhaps fasting might work?
I really hate using steroids. Could dosing actually
contribute to a flare? any ideas?

Hi annabree4!
I'm not an expert, but I've had at least four bouts with iritis (the first one was very severe) over the past 12 years. While my Opthamologist cautions against excessive use of steroid drops, when iritis is definitely present he wants them to be used early in order to limit the severity of the inflammation. If the iris inflames too much, permanent vision damage can result. So, my best advice is see you doctor right away to determine if iritis is present.
Hope you feel better fast!
Chimike

My husband has Uveitis or anterior iritis and it's ongoing. You just don't fool with it. See your Doctor and see if those eyes are full of white cells.
~Kewanee

Hi annabree,

Yes, you should definitely start dosing at whatever dose your optho normally gives you as your initial dose when he does diagnose you with iritis. I'm guessing every two hours at the very least; mine always just went straight to every hour. Then follow up with the first available appointment you can get. It's just as important to learn if you were wrong and you DON'T have iritis as it is to learn for sure that you do, as the sooner you stop the steroid drops the better.

If you are getting regularly recurring bouts of iritis like this--and this can mean as "infrequently" as just a couple times a year--and the only treatment your optho uses is steroid drops and dilating drops, then you need to approach your doctor about using another weapon too. Up until last year, those drops were all I had to use when I got iritis, and what that meant to me for the past four or five years is a near-constant bout of iritis in one eye or the other. No soone would the drops eradicate the iritis in one eye then I would get it in the other eye and start the cycle all over again. Sometimes I was REALLY lucky and had iritis in both eyes at once. Now that always a treat!

After years then, of the drops doing nothing but keep the iritis temporarily at bay, I went to the Kellogg Eye Center at the University of Michigan last summer and forever changed the way I'll fight iritis from here on out. I still have to use both types of drops as the frontline agent, but I have added two powerful new weapons: the first is another steroid called kenalog (not 100 percent sure on that spelling) that is given as an injection. I had one bout of iritis in each eye after I met my docter at kellogg last year, and he gave me a shot of kenalog right away for each. The two bouts presented differently too--the first one in the right eye was a stubborn case that would not go away and that led my regular optho to send me o UM in the first place, whereas the one in the left eye was a brand-new case that I caught the day it started, meaning it was definitely not entrenched like the first bout. The doc felt that for each "type" of iritis, kenalog would help stop it. The injections were given into the eyelid of each eye, not into the eyeball in this case (can happen, sorry to say), and even though he used a slightly different method for the two shots, both were just about painless.

The second, and I think most important, new med I got is a pill called Cellcept. My rheumatologist had already recommended that I start taking this for my iritis, and my optho wholeheartedly agreed. I'm too tired to remember much about cellcept's actual workings, so instead I've posted a couple links that will direct you to more info on cellcept so you can do some reading and see if you want to talk to your doc about adding it.

Official pharmacy site for cellcept
Info from RxList instead of the manufacturer

Together, the kenalog shots (which I forgot to mention last roughly six months, fighting iritis the whole time) and the cellcept have worked miracles: As of today, March 23, I have not had iritis in either eye since November. That is the longest streak I can remember in a LONG time. And, realize that the most important reason to add kenalog and/or cellcept is to reduce the overall number of iritis attacks you have, which in turn reduces the number of times you have to use the steroid drops. And, because the steroid drops ultimately cause cataracts (as I just surgically demonstrated last week!), less iritis means fewer uses of the eye drops, fewer eye drops means that you postpone cataracts, perhaps forever.

Good luck with the latest bout of iritis, hope this new info helps you get a more aggressive treatment plan.

Brad

Thanks so much for the info,Brad. AS sucks but iritis is horrible on so many levels its not even funny. This will be my 4th bout in 3 years.I lived on iritis.org for awhile
scary site to be at.Also nightmare eye docs saying I have
pink eye,wrong
meds no instructs on tapering steroids ect..
I finaly have insurance and I really need to quit being
in denial about having as. Its time to get a rhuemy and
have a balanced approach to living with this disease.
Oh, about the different levels of suffering with iritis,
now its presenting in my "good eye",my left eye having stig. (lazyeye) If I have to use dialation drops I probably
wont be able to drive to work or read for ..who knows?
I will talk with eye doc. about kenalog and cellcept today.
I did have a steroid injection last bout and realize how serious this can be. Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to my post. Gina