CEO For Not-For-Profit Organization Shares His Canaloplasty Surgery Experience
Gary Wheeler: I’m Gary Wheeler, I’m 65 years old. I’m the chief executive officer of a Not-for-Profit organization that does basically, retirement housing, health care, skilled nursing, related service for older adults, in Southern California and Mexico.
My diagnosis with glaucoma was kind of interesting. I go to an optometrist and really had been doing it for a long long time. And in recent years I began to notice when they do some of the test that especially in my right eye, when they show those little pin points of light, I was missing some of them. That has caused me to go to the ophthalmologist. Then in my first visit, the feeling was that the pressures were already high enough in the right eye that I was probably dealing for sure with glaucoma. Although the left eye wasn’t quite there, it had elevated pressure as well. And as a result of that, we began to talk about, “What do you want to do?” And I was asking, “What are really my options?” And I had expressed that, given my kind of work, and having watched number of people both on staff but also number of our residence, and knowing that I’m not really good in putting drops into my eyes, I was really hesitant to get into that type of a routine. Willing to do it, but because of my schedule and board meetings and travels, I had to be honest and say, “I am probably not a good candidate to stick well to a regimen like that. Are there any other options?” And so when I came in for, that session with the ophthalmologist I said, “By any chance, am I candidate for this surgery called canaloplasty?” And he said, “Well given your strong feelings about drops, and given the fact that the laser didn’t really work.” He says, “I think that you are.” And so, together, we made the decision that I would try the canaloplasty procedure and that’s what we did.
Pressure settled; it became quite normal. Went through the summer and began to realize the left eye was going to experience the same type of increase and so I said, “Well we know about me, I don’t like drops, I don’t do them well, laser didn’t work. Can we go right to canaloplasty on the left eye?” And that’s exactly what we did. All in all it was absolutely the right decision, for me. Given who I was, my lifestyle, the way I work, and what I wanted. So it’s an excellent result.
All in all it was absolutely the right decision, for me. Given who I was, my lifestyle, the way I work, and the, what I wanted. So it is an excellent result.
