dry eye helpline

 

One-on-one support and guidance

The Dry Eye Helpline offers a very personalized service for people who are struggling with the impact of severe dry eye disease. This includes:

  • 800 number (voice and text)

  • One-on-one peer counseling sessions for orientation, information, support and steering. This includes:

    • Listening to their story

    • Providing orientation

    • Assessing needs and setting goals

    • Finding resources

    • Help with appointment preparation

  • We connect clients with support groups and “Dry Eye Buddies”

  • Follow-up sessions and check-ins

Background: Why is this needed?

People struggling with highly symptomatic dry eye disease have many needs:

  • Medical needs - how can I get accurate diagnosis and up-to-date treatment advice?

  • Pain management needs - how can I get this under control to see comfortably?

  • Practical needs - what tools and strategies can help me drive, and work on a computer, and sleep through the night?

  • Emotional needs - how do I deal with the fear and isolation of an invisible, confusing and astonishingly painful disease?

But because dry eye disease, and accompanying ocular surface pain, is an emerging area of medicine, primary care eye doctors (optometrists and ophthalmologists) are not well equipped to help them even with the medical questions, let alone the life impact.

Many people try treatment after treatment and go from doctor to doctor, while their symptoms continue to escalate and to affect basic daily activities - driving, working, sleeping.

When you can no longer see comfortably, and are struggling with a form of chronic pain that no one understands or seems to take seriously, depression and anxiety are virtually inevitable - and they make everything harder. How do you find a doctor who has enough specialist skills and is familiar with emerging treatments? How do you learn that there are practical tools and strategies to help you in your daily life? How do you get emotional support and figure out how not to succumb to fear and panic about the future? How do you pay for all the treatments and over-the-counter remedies that insurance will not cover? How do you get your employer to provide some simple accommodations?

Perhaps more than anything else, struggling dry eye patients need hope that things can get better.

How you can help

  • Donations: Help fund our Helpline!

  • Ophthalmologists or optometrist? Help spread the word. Order brochures to share with your patients.