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Recently diagnosed with glaucoma and having allergic reaction to drops
I was diagnosed with glaucoma on July 10 of this year. The scans (?) of my optic nerve show that I barely have any damage and am in the early stages of it. My doctor prescribed three different eye drops, Latanoprost, Timolol, and now Travaprost PF, but all of them cause me to have itchy red welts on my torso (front and back), arms, neck, and jawline.
I googled the symptoms and it seems I am allergic to something in the drops, but my doctor isn't so sure because, "It's extremely rare to have that happen." Yes, that's my life - I often have those extremely rare side effects.
I know I am early in this journey, but I can't live with these welts randomly showing up on my body. When I stopped the first two drops (on doctor's advice), I felt relief, but the last one I started yesterday and am already feeling itchy.
Suggestions?
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The doctor really never explained why he prescribed drops causing me severe breathing difficulty. I have asthma, so clearly these drops should not have been given to me.
Yes, Rocklatan has reduced my eye pressures. My pressures are still elevated but not dangerously so.
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1 ReactionEditing my post from page 1 as I stated farsightedness is cause for glaucoma, when it's actually the opposite, nearsightedness or myopia.
@bariis Thank you for this heads-up! I was posting earlier to kwgriff user about my situation and about phoning my doctor's office to switch me to Iyuzeh brand drops that do not contain benzalkonium chloride as I was taking latanoprost generic by Greenstone that contains BAK. I guess he saw the price of the Iyuzeh and called in the generic Timolol by Somerset Theraputics instead and I went ahead and started using it. I'm now getting hot flashes and can't sleep. It's a beta-blocker.
Since I have dry eye syndrome, too, I looked at what my over-the-counter dry eye treatments contained and tossed the Wallyworld carboxymethylcellulose drops that contain BAK. You'd think doctors would look up the simple wiki information on bezalkomium chloride and realize that it's harmful to the eyes. My husband is an engineeer and his brother a chemist, so he knows about chemicals and that's why years ago we stopped buying certain products (soda pops and many other products with benzoic acid ) and read labels, but in this case I didn't bother. I just did buy Preservative-Free Refresh Optive Mega-3 with Flaxseed Oil and noticed one of it's inactive ingredients is butylated hydroxyl toluene. My husband would declair, "Toluene is a paint stripper!" It also has many other ingredients, one that looks like liquid plastic. Anyway, I'm thankful for the heads-up of this thread and all the posters who responded with helpful information and now I am looking into preservative free dry eye drops such as Eyeorganics and Optase Allegro that I can get through Walgreens.
The next thing to do is go to the pharmacy and have him or her give me the prices of the preservative free pressure reducing drops and hopefully get my doctor to prescribe me the lowest cost one, which looks like it will be a generic of Travatan Z, which from one online source says inactive ingredient is propylene glycol. I've always avoided food stuffs, lotions and dry eye drops that contain this.
Rocklatan is out of my price range. It looks like it contains two drugs; natarsudil and latanaprost.