UPDATE! January 2016
I have been attending hospital and having increasingly regular laser treatment for retinopathy over the last 4 years. Having had no need for laser since November 2014, I have finally been discharged by the hospital. This last year without laser treatment coincides with my using the Noctura eyemask. I have been using this for 11 months now and I personally believe there is a direct connection and that the Noctura 400 eyemask has helped in preventing my eye condition worsening. I will keep using the eyemask as I feel it will continue to keep my eyes healthy.
November 2015
Four years ago, I was told I had Diabetic Retinopathy (DR). It’s obviously scary when you find out you have a condition which could cause you to go blind. The worst thought for me was the fear I could lose my peripheral vision and not be able to drive. I work as an architectural technician for Durham County Council so I wouldn’t be able to do my job if I lost my sight.
For three-and-a-half years, I’ve had more laser treatments than I could count. It was pretty much every month. The more laser treatment you have, the more sensitive your eyes become so the more painful it is. Then afterwards, I used to get bad headaches.
I went to a seminar about the Noctura 400 eye mask and signed up straight away. I’m now on my fourth mask. Since I started wearing it, I’ve had no laser treatment at all. It’s really given me hope for the future as before I started wearing the sleep mask, my eyes seemed to be deteriorating quickly.
I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 1984 when I was 10. I’d lost a massive amount of weight in a week. My grandad was diabetic so he had an idea of what it was. The regime you have to keep to has changed a lot since then. I used to have two injections a day but now it’s five or six, which gives you more freedom when it comes to meals. That’s part of an education programme, which helps with control but until I found out about the sleep mask, I didn’t think there was a great deal I could do to stop the retinopathy from getting worse.
The light from the sleep mask isn’t bright at all, so it doesn’t bother me and I can see when I go to the opticians what a difference it is making. They show me pictures of my eyes each time and I can see that my condition is now stable.
