As Mrs D. and others here know, I have suffered with small fiber neuropathy since 2005. It first began as a purely crainal (facial) neuropathy, which then faded away over time and was replaced with a distal small fiber neuropathy.

It affects my hands, my feet to a small degree, and the skin over my calves and knees to a small degree as well.

My small fiber neuropathy was officially diognosed via the "Therapath" skin biopsy, which was then followed over several years with repeat biopsies. The biopsies showed an average of a 20% below normal nerve fiber density at the extremities, and normal but steadily decreasing nerve density values proximally.

Since 2008, I have noticed steadily increasing levels of "Veiled Glare" with regards to my eyesight. In other words, I am getting a lot of "wash-out" of contrast sensivity. An example of this would be sitting in a dark room with someone sitting across a table from me. Behind them, in-turn, would be a bright window with sunlight entering through it.

The details of the person sitting in front of me, in-turn, would then be lost to a great degree in light "wash-out".

The reason that this is called "veiled glare" is because when I lower my hand slowly from my forehead down across my eyes, much of the light scatter and glare evenly disappears across both my eyes, and I regain sharp visual contrast.

That said, in September, 2010 my eye doctor did an "OCT" scan of my retinia. This relatively new technology measure the retinal thickness of your eye, and can be a measure of nerve intregity.

My OCT results showed a 22% age-adjusted decrease in my retinal nerve density, which is very close to what my skin biopsy showed.

I should also mention that I was also dignosed with every early-stage cataracts (at age 48). The opinion of my eye doctors is that my "veiled glare" was likely due to internal light scatter from my cataracts, and not due to any nerve issues.

They said that glare issues are usually due more to optics (such a small cateracts within a lens) as opposed to being caused by retinal nerve issues.

Do you have any thoughts on the various data I have thrown out here? Could the glare issues possibly be associated with my underlying neuropathy?

I appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks!

David