A Topiramate Scare

Got back from walking the dogs this morning and sat down to start work when I realised that my vision was blurry in my right eye, both near and far and it was a bit painful.

Uh oh!

This was not good news as a rare side effect of taking Topiramate is closed angle glaucoma and the symptoms were two of those of closed angle glaucoma. I should also have really had a dilated pupil for full house but the patient instructions are that pain and blurring are enough to declare this an emergency and my consultant had been at pains to make it clear that if I got symptoms I shouldn't piss about but should proceed directly to A&E as, if it's not caught early, it can result in permanent damage to the eye.

Beth can't drive of course as she's still in plaster and here I am with blurred vision and not knowing how long I might be in hospital so it was taxi time.

£15 later and I was deposited at the front door of Addenbrooke's A&E.

They were very good. They did a simple wall chart test initially, which confirmed I wasn't telling porkies, and then got me in with a nurse practitioner who squinted into my eye. First checking I had no foreign bodies in there, then looking for signs of glaucoma, and finally putting drops in and illuminating my eye with UV to pick up tears in the cornea.

And that's all it was: I'd somehow managed to scratch the cornea right in the centre of my vision line. I must have had some dust go in my eye in the Country Park and then rubbed it. There were a couple of smaller cuts too. Nothing to worry about, just annoying. So she gave me some Chloramphenicol antibiotic cream to use four times a day for the next few days, which is mainly to stop it hurting while it heals itself, and sent me on my way.

The only annoyance, other than the lost time and expense, is that my right eye is now even blurrier, as it's now covered in a thin film of this cream.

Still, at least it wasn't anything serious. Phew etc.

Interesting little follow up to this story: a week later my GP mailed me to ask why I'd gone to A&E with something in my eye rather than coming to see him. Turns out that Addenbrooke's A&E bill the local PCT so it's then passed on to him for him to remind me that I should come to him wherever possible. To be fair to him he didn't have all the facts: nowhere in the admission form he'd been given was there any mention of Topiramate.