Hi
I am the forum member who Catherine Cherub has referred to. I am very sorry to hear of what you are going through.
I'm not sure how similar my experience will be, but I'll tell it nonetheless. I developed PDR towards the end of my first pregnancy, at that stage it was not so bad and they did a bit of laser. about a year later my other eye 'went mad' and got quite serious proliferative disease. I had just started trying for a baby, literally just had my contraception removed and I was not due to be seen at the eye hospital for a while but fate must have intervened as I broke my glasses a few days later and when I saw the opticians he looked in my eyes and said to get it checked out asap so I knew it was bad. They said not to try for a baby until it had stabilised, I had a lot of laser and then some bad bleeds, and ended up having a vitrectomy and avastin injections.
I wasn't sure whether it would be safe to try for another baby or not, and no one could give me a straight answer, so I ended up forking out to see the top consultant in my part of the country privately and he said if I had more laser I should be ok. I then got pregnant a few months later and was ok until quite late in the pregnancy (36 weeks) when I had a bleed in the other eye which has cleared a lot now but I need to have some more laser. I'm really hoping that will sort it but I've been told I will be at risk of bleeding for the rest of my life as once you grow the new vessels they can always bleed even when you've been lasered.
When I had my vitrectomy it was under local anaesthetic/ sedation, and whilst not exactly pleasant it wasn't sooo terrible. I was fully conscious throughout and could see them fiddling around in my eyeball which was not scary but more just really interesting to watch (!). So I wouldn't agree that the op will completely stress you out if you have it done under a local. I dont' know if you will be able to have sedation if pregnant but that could be an option rather than a general. The hardest thing in my vitrectomy was having to lie still for 2 hours. They put your head in this kind of bowl thing but it got a bit uncomfortable after an hour, no problem I just told the surgeon and he let me have a wriggle. But if that was the worst thing, what I'm trying to say is, the actual op itself was not so bad!
As far as the lucentis goes, this is an anti-growth hormone drug so I would imagine it is not safe to use in pregnancy.
Its a real dilemma for you, I guess if you continue with the pregnancy and lose more sight you may not be able to get it back but I can imagine it will break your heart to terminate a healthy foetus after trying for so long. Would you be able to try again after your eyes have stabilised or would the threat of further retinopathy put you off that? I know I was reluctant to try for my second child but although I've had a bleed I've been told that the laser I had protected me a lot and that I haven't had new vessels growing in the pregnancy, the bleed was caused by old vessels from a couple of years ago breaking. I won't be having any more kids now though.
So I've not acutally had these procedure whilst pregnant but have had both of them outside of pregnancy, so hope that my story can be of some use.
I really feel for you going through this and hope you can come to a decision as to what to do.
I know when I had my first bleed I was not happy with the advice I got on the NHS and I paid for a private consultation with someone really good (I also did this to make the decision whether to try for a second baby) so if this an option for you it may help you to make this important decision. I've found that HCPs can be reluctant to advise you on the risk of something particularly if it involves telling you to have/not have a baby so sometimes you have to pay for the advice you need.
Good luck and feel free to pm me if you like (you may need to make some more posts first though)
