Deborah Levine
DL Opinion columns

Getting older – the Eyes have it! – by Deborah Levine

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

I remember as a kid telling my mom that I didn’t want to ever get old and drop dead. She told me to get over myself because humans are like flowers: we bloom, fade and die. So anticipating getting a shot in my left eye for AMD (Age-related macular degeneration), I had to get over my fear. I distracted myself with YouTube videos. I love watching Julie Andrews dancing on the mountain singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music”. Sighing blissfully, I watch her sing “Do Re Me” with the kids, and then, singing Edelweiss with the whole family just before they climb over the mountains to escape the Nazis. Andrews made The Sound of Music movie in 1965 and is now 90 years old. She doesn’t have AMD but did lose her voice during vocal chord surgery gone awry – a reminder that aging has many unanticipated consequences.  

Not surprisingly, I was terrified to have an injection into my eye. The goal was to save my eyesight since my condition turned out be advanced. It’s what they call the ‘Wet’ form of AMD But might it go awry and blind me? l researched the situation to make sure that I was making good choices. That’s when I discovered that 20 million Americans aged 40 and older live with some form of AMD. And about 1.5 million Americans are like me and have the advanced form. By 2050, that number will increase to 5.5 million – more than tripling the number of people suffering from it. 

These shots can slow down the degeneration of the macula which gives us straight-ahead vision. 

But it was depressing to find out that there is no cure for AMD. These shots into the eye are an ongoing, endless treatment. How do we live with that? Needing some inspiration, I decided to explore online stories of folks with AMD who keep moving on. It was obvious that I’m not alone when I looked up famous people who’ve had the AMD condition: authors Harper Lee and Stephen King, actors Roseanne Barr and Ernest Borgnine, artists, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. 

My favorite AMD case is British actress Dame Judi Dench. She says, “I’m not going to be beaten by my eyes.” Like me, she has the dry form in one eye and the wet form in the other, but at age 91, she continues to work on stage and screen. Plus, she’s never had plastic surgery on her face to look younger like so many actresses have done. I say to Dench, “Atta girl!” 

Getting older is a privilege as well as a burden and life expectancy of Americans reached a record highs according to the CDC (Center for Disease Control). The average life expectancy is 81.4 years for women and 75.8 to 76.5 years for men. The means that a lot of us are going to have to learn to deal with aging. AMD is one of the common elements of aging, so we all should know how to deal with it. What does that require of us?

Dealing with AMD means no smoking and maintaining a healthy diet with lots of leafy green veggies. Also, protect your eyes from the UV light of bright sunlight as well as mercury-vapor lamps, tanning lamps, and black lights. Not that there are genetics involved in some cases. So if you have family members with AMD, get your eyes checked regularly. There are excellent Chattanooga retina eye doctors who can examine your eyes specifically for AMD. And they’ll treat you well, as they are treating me. Let’s keep moving on! 

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