CLEVELAND — Seventy-one-year-old Pam Peters is a crafter.
She needs her eyes to do her work; she also needed to get her diabetes under control. Her endocrinologist put her on Ozempic, a weekly injectable medication that has become a weight loss rage.
Pam injected the medication each Friday for three weeks, but hours after her third dose, she says it was like somebody threw a switch. Her vision blurred significantly.
She immediately contacted her doctors and went to her ophthalmologist, who then gave her devastating news.
"She said legally I could no longer drive at night," Pam says she was told. "I couldn't read street signs, lights had halos, my night vision was just gone."
Peters' doctors believe she suffered from the second serious side effect on the Ozempic label: changes in vision.
In June of 2020, Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science looked at the results of the Ozempic clinical trial and found of more than 2,100 adverse events with with the drug. One hundred forty dealt with vision changes, including diabetic retinopathy, macular complications, and blurred vision.
"I contacted Novo Nordisk, and they took my information to send to the FDA," Pam recalled, "and then I contacted the FDA and reported my situation."
Her doctors told her she's not alone.
"They said there are probably more people out there with vision problems, but they're not correlating it with the Ozempic," she said.
Ozempic and Wegovy are now in short supply since a social media storm promoting their effectiveness with weight loss. Ozempic is not FDA approved for weight loss, but Wegovy does have FDA approval. Both contain semaglutide, which mimics a hormone that makes you feel full.
Most people do lose weight as long as they're on it. Still, Pam wants people to understand that the dream of a quick fix could come with a nightmare attached.
"Every day I wake up, I don't know how long it will last or if there is anything that can be done," she told us of her vision problems.