Two weeks ago, I went to see an EENT (eye, ear, nose, throat) doctor. I had been having problems with my eyes for weeks. It had gotten to the point where I would have constant headaches, especially after long hours of programming work. If it were entirely up to me, I would have just gone to the optometrist, have my eyes checked, get prescription lenses and be done with it. On my wife’s insistence, I decided to go to the doctor, a real doctor, instead.

Diagnosis

The results were nothing short of surprising to me. It turns out, my eyesight is still perfect more or less. Even though I’ve had prescription lenses before, I stopped wearing them after about 3 months. The doctor told me my eyes were fine and that the headaches were just due to eyestrain. He recommended breaks every 15 minutes when I’m working and to have a properly lit working environment.

There’s a problem with his first recommendation though: when I am in the middle of writing code, I find it hard to keep track of time and at times I end up working 2-3 hours straight! The second recommendation is another problem: my workstation is in my bedroom. It’s hard enough to get my kid to sleep when it’s totally dark, how much more if there were lights turned on.

Somehow a compromise for both problems had to be reached. Fortunately, GNOME comes with a [built-in typing break][gnome-tb]. But it seems to be a bit buggy at the moment. When I enable and then disable it and then re-enable it, the notification icon does not reappear and it seems the app does not run. But it’s better than nothing I guess. I set mine to trigger every 30 minutes and lock the keyboard for 5 minutes.

As for the second problem, it looks like I’ll have to adjust and stagger my late night programming a bit to every other night and limit it to two hours only.

Prescription

I also got some prescription drugs:

• Aulin 100mg bid for 5 days
• Prednisolone Acetate Pred Forte eyedrops 1 on each eye every 3 hours for 1 week
• Systane eyedrops 1 on each eye 4 times a day as maintenance

Aulin was a great concern for me. Its generic name is “Nimesulide” and a quick search on the Interwebs turns up some rather discouraging results. Most of the results point to recent reports of the drug being banned in India and other countries. It did not get approved by the FDA and is also banned in other countries. The European Medicine Evaluation Agency has also banned its use for children under the age of 12. Good thing I only bought 6 tablets and when they ran out, I did not buy it any more. It turns out two days of rest got rid of my headaches.

Pred Forte was another cause for concern for me. Prednisolone is a steroid and my metabolism does not seem to take ‘roids. After two days of using it, I gained about 4 pounds! Craptastic! Good thing this drug works or I would have chucked it into the garbage. My eyes started to feel a lot less “pressurized” after about three days. One other thing I didn’t like about this drug is that when it drains from your eyes and into your throat through your tearducts, there is this bitter, awful aftertaste that takes a long time to get rid of.

Could It Be My Monitor

My monitor is more than 4 years old now. Recently, it started having those symptoms that scream “I NEED A REPLACEMENT!”. There are times that a slight tap on the desk would turn my screen blank. There are also times when the green CRT gun would misfire or stop firing completely and I end up with only red and blue colors on my screen. I hope I can get this thing repaired or, better yet, replaced with an LCD.

[gnome-tb]: http://www.gnome.org/learn/users-guide/latest/prefs-keyboard.html#goscustdesk-TBL-87 “Gnome Keyboard Preferences”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Yes, I do have a Life.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.