Renu Ruined my Vision

June 2, 2007, 11:45AM. By Jane Mundy

Merrimac, NHJust before I went to the Bahamas on vacation, my mum gave me two packs of ReNu MoistureLoc travel bottles - perfect timing, or so I thought," says 16-year-old Nicole Rossetti. "She had signed up with some promotion through her optometrist and Bausch & Lomb sent it to us by mail."

"Everything was fine while I was on vacation but when I got home my eyes started to get irritated and they were burning. It wasn't long before I had a nasty infection in both eyes. When I woke up one morning it was so bad that I could barely see and it hurt to look into the light. Instead I stayed under my blankets -- I couldn't even get out of bed.

That day my mum took me to the doctor: he didn't know what was going on so he sent me to an ophthalmologist. He wasn't sure either what was causing the infection but told me that my corneas were scratched and there were inflammations underneath my eyelashes. He prescribed antibiotic drops that cost $75 (I still have all the empty bottles and old prescriptions) but they didn't work. I couldn't wear my contacts but in retrospect that was a good thing because I wasn't using any more ReNu.

And that's not all. The worst part is that, when I was first prescribed contacts 18 months prior, my eyes were a negative 1.00 (a measure of the contact lens strength). Now I am a negative 2.50, quite a jump -- and my vision declined this much over a three week time period!

When I told my ophthalmologist that I had used Renu on vacation, he told me that it was very likely the cause of this infection. To this day, it still hasn't completely cleared up -- the infection keeps coming back. I go back to see him regularly and the office staff joke that I am part of their family.

And I have seen other specialists. One doctor told me that if my eyes keep changing at this rate, I might become blind by the time I am 30. Nobody has told me that there is a cure. Instead they keep changing my prescription, hoping that it will eventually clear up.

I am very worried about this. My friends make fun of me when I take my contacts out or my glasses off (I can only wear contacts for a few hours at a time) because I can only see outlines of people and things. They say stuff like 'are you that blind' and put their fingers up to my face and say 'Hey can you count these?' It hurts that they tease me but I wonder how they would react if they were in my position.

I'm kind of scared. The only time I take my glasses of is when I am in the shower or just before going to bed. My sister and my mum have perfect vision -- it has nothing to do with genetics. There is no explanation as to how my eyes deteriorated so fast except for Renu MoistureLoc."