Shannon Davis was feeling on top of his health at 43, watching his diet and exercising regularly.
With a steady job and a family with two young children, Mr Davis was in “complete shock” when he was suddenly diagnosed with glaucoma and declared legally blind.
“[I thought] I don’t need glasses so my eyes must be healthy,” Mr Davis said.
His diagnosis came about after a conversation with his mother where she pointed out how strange it was he did not wear glasses, given both she and his father had worn them from about his age, as did his two sisters.
She suggested perhaps he did need them and just didn’t know it, and after a few weeks of her reminding him with “that beautiful nagging only a mother can do”, he got his eyes checked.
“It wasn’t long into the test when the optometrist flicked the light switch and said ‘you mentioned your wife is nearby, do you think you could call her to come and join us?’,” Mr Davis said.
“And I was thinking, ‘Why, have I done something wrong?’ and she said, ‘No, but I think it’s really clear from what I’ve seen so far that you have very advanced glaucoma affecting both eyes, and I think the damage is so bad and so permanent that you need to see an eye surgeon urgently – and by that I mean tomorrow morning, and I will facilitate that for you.'”
‘No symptoms, no headaches’
Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases where damage to the optic nerve causes irreversible vision loss, which – like in the case of Mr Davis – usually starts in the peripheral vision.
With no cure or predictive test, the disease is one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness worldwide.
Mr Davis said the first 24 hours were full of disbelief that his diagnosis could be right.
“I was just in shock, complete shock, because I could see her, and here she was telling me that all of this damage had occurred to my eyes,” he said.
Three hours of scans and tests from an eye surgeon the next day confirmed Mr Davis had end-stage glaucoma – the most advanced form of the disease – and the permanent damage to his eyesight was so severe he was considered legally blind.
After receiving that diagnosis he could not work anymore, and he could not drive.
“Like any other emotional roller-coaster, you start to question: ‘How did I miss this? How could I have had no warning that this was happening to me?’,” Mr Davis said.
“No symptoms, no headaches, nothing that was obvious.”
Mr Davis’s treatment journey started with trying different types of eye drops over a year, then laser surgery on both eyes twice over six months, but his disease was still clearly progressing.
His surgeon then decided to operate with a trabeculectomy – the most severe treatment option and an operation Mr Davis was told had a 10 per cent chance would see him immediately lose all sight in the eye.
While he will likely need more surgeries over his lifetime to combat the disease, for the past two years, Mr Davis has seen no progression of his glaucoma.
Now he is calling for raised awareness of the disease and encouraging people to get themselves tested.
‘Awareness is the missing piece of the puzzle’
Canberra ophthalmologist Dr Noor Ali, one of two glaucoma specialists in the nation’s capital, said the most regrettable thing about the disease was its ability to cause vision loss without noticeable symptoms.
“That’s the unfortunate thing about glaucoma, it’s called ‘the silent thief of sight’ because patients don’t necessarily have symptoms or feel anything going on,” Dr Ali said.
“It’s just once the glaucoma has damaged quite a substantial part of that side vision that something becomes apparent.
“Unfortunately once the side vision has been lost, we cannot get any back, but we can certainly stop it in its tracks – or at the very least slow down further worsening.”
Dr Ali said awareness of glaucoma has been raised in recent years thanks to the work of not-for-profits such as Glaucoma Australia, but it was still predominantly optometrists who knew about it.
“A lot of the time you find that people go in for their usual optometry check and get screened for glaucoma,” she said.
“[But] people are so busy, and if you don’t have any reason to go to the optometrist you may not necessarily think of it.”
Dr Ali said while people who have a family member diagnosed with glaucoma likely know they need to get their eyes checked, “there are unfortunately a lot of people that get surprised with a diagnosis”.
“Now with the accessibility to the optometry community and the advanced testing methods that allow us to detect it early, certainly awareness is the missing piece of the puzzle,” she said.
“If people go and get tested then we can identify them early, they can be referred to the glaucoma specialist early, and we can intervene early.”
Dr Ali emphasised that early identification of the disease was the best way to help minimise a patient’s vision loss.
“Often times a patient will come in with a big visual field defect for the first time, and their pressure may be quite high but even lowering that pressure takes the stress off the cells that haven’t yet died,” she said.
“So getting in early, and getting treatment early is also very important to preserve what [vision] patients have.”
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