On Christmas eve I received a post card from a family that we treat here and on the back they wrote the below note:
It's very heartwarming to see that something we did had such a positive outcome. I called her and she said that it was a delicate procedure with a complication and she had to be in the hospital for a month. She was very grateful. Brain tumors are relatively rare but we do check for them in our routine eye exams. The ways we check for them include color vision and Amsler grid test at pre-testing and typically a dilated fundus exam, often followed up with fundus photos, visual fields, and OCT imaging. This particular patient had no color vision in her right eye and 5/8 color vision plates in her left eye and she had an, inferior temporal quadrantanopsia (could not see down and to her right) in her right eye with 2+ pallor of the right optic nerve and best visual acuity of 20/200 which suggested optic nerve pathology. She was a member of an HMO and preferred to have a work-up there. She said that if I had not given the note that I wrote to rule out a brain tumor, they would have ignored her or taken longer to receive care and it's a good thing that they acted quickly because one of the doctors said that she most likely would have a stroke and die within 3 weeks without the surgery. Best wishes for a happy 2023 to everyone.
Dr. Riggs and staff