Anyone have experience with macular degeneration?
My mother just turned 80. Last year she had her cataracts done. Today she went to her eye doctor and her doctor took an image or something and mentioned macular degeneration possibly.
She went to her doctor about 5 months ago and there was no signs of it so this is just within the last few months.
Anybody ever have that or know someone who had that and like a time frame of how fast things can happen?
Thanks everyone have a great day
= new reply since forum marked as read
I've had first hand experience with it.
I've had it for years.. not too bad at first but has been getting progressively worse.
Still hanging in there.. have the zoom up to 200%.
The Retina Specialists advise eating greens & taking 2 Preservision AREDS2 a day.
Course it varies in different people.. Good Luck to your Mom
1. Spinach
Spinach is the ultimate leafy green when it comes to improving eyesight. The small leaf is packed with lutein and zeaxanthin, which are healthy antioxidants your eyes and body need.
These antioxidants help to prevent free radicals in the eyes. When free radicals are present, they lead the cells in your eyes to die off. They can leave you open to various vision conditions and diseases.
One disease that spinach helps to prevent is macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is a disease that affects the macula of the eye, which is found at the center of the retina. It is the leading cause of blindness in older adults.
When the macula begins to degenerate, it will slowly diminish a person’s central vision. Though the macula will eventually degenerate, foods like spinach help to keep the disease at bay.
https://www.rebuildyourvision.com/blog/food-for-your-eyes/4-super-leafy-greens-for-improved-eyesight/#:~:text=Spinach%20is%20the%20ultimate%20leafy%20green%20when%20it,the%20cells%20in%20your%20eyes%20to%20die%20off.
I'm getting some Spinach Today!
if you hadn't asked & I wanted to do the research.
you have yours under control from getting an early start with AREDS2 & Greens in your diet.
Some days I see better than others so that's encouraging!
it but thought I should come clean on this thread.
I have my trusty magnifying glasses strategically placed around, too.. that's how I read print that's smaller than 200%.
I hope you're doing alright with it, Buckeye Dem.. Aloha! 
interested in how others are doing with it.
Seems I'm the only one in my family who's had it. I just hope I'm able to see well enough until the end.
I notice I can see better after I run, too.. so that's always an incentive to get me out there on the grass in front of the Kauai War Memorial where I do my laps!
Good on you helping your brother out before he had to go into the Nursing home & your other family members helping each other out!.
you were.. that happened to me at one point.
I haven't been able to see the Specialist since the trump Virus hit because the Retina Specialists are in Honolulu & aren't flying over to Kauai yet.. so I've been on my own.
Having steamed kale & quinoa for a late supper tonight! 
May your dad's MD stay at bay!
At first she was able to continue driving during the day but could no longer drive at night. After a few years she needed to give up driving altogether. She's close to 80 now and she has trouble seeing the television unless she's very close to it. She can still see light and dark areas around her, but reading is difficult unless she uses a special magnifying lens. For Ursula it was about 10 years of steady decline, and after that she was legally blind even though she still sees light and darkness.
Thank you for posting your experience.
It's a type of early-onset macular degeneration that resulted from a very rare genetic condition.
A couple of my older siblings have been legally blind from it for years. It started to affect one of my eyes in my 30's, but there was no effective treatment at that time. So I'm legally blind in one eye.
By the time my other eye was affected -- e.g., detectable by vision distortions as fluid leaked behind and into the retina, like someone pushing against a previously flat movie screen -- a new experimental treatment was available.
Long story short, it worked! It was an anti-VEGF drug called Avastin. I needed it injected directly into the eyeball for years, about every month or so.
Then something incredible happened to me from a mugging/assault which could have killed me, but instead it caused scar tissue to form in my "good eye" at the perfect location! It formed directly behind Bruch's membrane, which had tiny cracks that had previously allowed the blood vessels to grow and leak into my retina in the first place. So the scar tissue basically sealed those cracks, and I haven't needed the Avastin injections ever since!
Scar tissue is normally what you want to avoid! If the leaking is allowed to persist for too long, scar tissue will form and it's usually within the retina. Once that happens, it interferes with the high-metabolism of the photoreceptors and the RPE (retinal pigment epithelium). Then the photoreceptors essentially drown in their own waste and they die, never to be replaced.
Be thankful that there's effective treatments now, at least for the the "wet form" of macular degeneration which can cause blindness very fast.
By the way, I'm always surprised by the inaccurate depictions of the blind spots that result from it -- e.g., a photograph with a large black spot in the middle of it. They're terribly inaccurate because:
(1) They'll show the areas outside of the black (blind) spot as being clearly visible, but the peripheral vision is actually pretty terrible at providing details. You can't see such details with your peripheral vision, allowing a person to read with it and such.
(2) They're not black spots at all! The blind spots instead get "filled in" by the brain with whatever is visible around it. So if someone with a large blind spot in their central vision looked directly at a painting displayed on a red wall, all they'll see is red as if the painting doesn't even exist.
Best wishes to your mother! 
detailed report on your kind of MD. Amazing how the "mugging" actually helped you in the long run!
I have the dry kind.. the specialists are evidently still working on a helpful cure for that.
As far as I know, you're taking the best course with your diet and just trying to stay healthy overall.
Thanks! My perfectly-placed scar tissue was so incredibly fortunate! It also makes me hopeful that there could be new techniques in the future to help others with the wet form, other than the repeated anti-VEGF injections.
VEGF is used throughout our bodies to promote blood vessel growth toward the cells that release it. As cells age, they tend to release more if it. The cracks in Bruch's membrane were there from the time I was very young. Yet it was only when the retina cells started releasing VEGF to get more oxygen and nutrients from the established blood vessels that are SUPPOSED to be nearby (entering the retina with the optic nerve), that the VEGF also leaked through those cracks and thus promoted new (and fragile) blood vessels to grow through them into the retina where they'd inevitably leak.
It's very similar to what happens in the wet form of "age-related" macular degeneration, so the treatments are identical.
understanding and explaining all that technical stuff!
Mahalo for the .. needed it. 
I always wanted to understand it deeply, figuring it could be useful eventually. I tend to be that way in general too, majoring in math & physics because I wanted to try to understand the world at a fundamental level. (An INTP personality-type.)
Best wishes to you, as always!
I'm vegan & don't do fish oil.
It's totally understandable, and I mostly wanted to reply in case others got the wrong ideas.
Do you know, or does your mom know if the condition was described as "wet" or "dry"? Wet Macular Degeneration is more concerning, it is progressing at a "rapid" rate. Dry is slow.
There are treatments I haven't attempted to try. But I think it's strictly for "wet" conditions, but I don't know for certain.
I was diagnosed in 2010 but only because I went to a free clinic in order to get a much needed free eye examine and prescription. I'm pretty sure it began in 2007/2008.
My condition is considered "dry" so far. It has progressed significantly at this point, but it's now 10 or 11 years from diagnoses.
It has been impossible for me to safely drive at night for the past four years. I've had cataracts removed, that wasn't the issue.
Vision has deteriorated to the point under certain conditions driving on a sunny day is unsafe. I cannot see when driving through a deeply shaded, tree line road creating a significant contrast of shade vs bright light from the sun.
I'm unable to see facial details of others a few yards away. I have to determine who it is I'm looking at by other characteristics, like the gait of their walk, height etc. Can't use the hair color anymore, because most of my neighbors have white hair. 
I am unable to see black framed eye glasses on a black table. I could go on and on. But fortunately, I don't have what is referred to as "wet" condition, which means a very rapid rate of progression.
I'm told by my Ophthalmologists that I should start mentally preparing for the time when I won't be able to read text, and see much in the way of details.
I have a couple of black appliances like a microwave. I put a red sticker dot on the stop button, and yellow one on the start button. Do the same thing on my black portable CD player. I require a lot of lighting in the house. But other than I'm good.
Just wasn't expecting something like this developing in my life, I used to have 20/20 vision until computers. then every changed.
I think there's a lot of research going on. One that may involve gene code editing, that might be in the works, but I don't expect to have access to these study groups.
In any event. If you'r mom's condition is progressing slowly at the age of 80. that shouldn't be that much of an issue for functioning.
You might want to check with her doctor on the specifics.
I shared my experience in real time hopefully to help. I'm 70 1/2, and though it's sort of pain in the derriere I don't let it slow me down too much. And I can still l play my instruments, my hearing is just fine!
so far...
