Ocular Histoplasmosis Syndrome

I'm going to try to explain my OHS as easily as possible. Basically, I breathed in a common fungus carried by bats/birds. Most people have no problems from the fungus; some people have flu-like symptoms, but most do not even know they breathed in the fungus. Because of my lowered immune system from Thyroid Disease, the fungus was able to cause histo spots, or scars, on my retinas. Only 5% of people who breathe the fungus develop histo spots, and most of those patients have no problems from the spots, themselves; another element causes the vision loss.

I chose a picture online to help explain it. (1) is the optic nerve, where the central vision is located. This is how one focuses on things. (2) is a histo spot scar. (3) is a blood vessel going to the scar. Now here is where things get tricky.

The body is designed to heal itself. Anytime a scar is present on your body, your immune system will send blood to the scar to give it nutrients and try to heal the area. This will not work with histo spots, so the vessel(s) continue to leak blood to the scar(s). This leaky blood can cause blindness very quickly. Objective: stop the bleeding as quickly as possible...which I will discuss in my next post.

This second photo shows a bit of detail concerning what is actually going on. You can see how the leaky blood causes a "hump" to form. This can cause distortion if it is close to the central optic nerve (like my scars are). Text shows up as "wavy" and so do straight lines. I haven't seen a straight line in months! Also included are darkened spots in my vision. When it first starts out, a gray circle distorts what I see. As the bleeding continues, this gray spot darkens and turns into a black spot that I cannot see through. That is what has happend to my right eye. I have my periphreal vision only. My left eye was caught in time (during the gray stage)--thank GOD! I'll discuss my treatments in the next post.