1 week post graft

Nothing much to report.   My eye starts out a little puffy in the morning but soon settles down.  It starts watering a bit in the afternoon and this gets steadily worse into the evening.  No big deal though.

I was supposed to see the consultant next week (two weeks after the op), but there are no outpatient appointments available.  I've been bumped until mid-July.  I queried this and apparently the change was made with "the consultant's approval".   How hard could it be to pre-book a sequence of follow-up  appointments when the surgery was booked.  (This would involve using two systems (inpatients and outpatients) which probably don't talk to each other).

The vision seems to have stabalised - or at least is changing very slowly.   It's better than it was before but not much.  Once it fully settles down though it should be a lot easier to correct than it was before.

Three days after

My eye watered a lot yesterday but the fluid was clear and I'm confident that it isn't a sign of infection.  Sleeping is proving a bit difficult.  I normally prefer to sleep on my left side but I don't feel able to do this, even with the hard plastic shield covering my eye. 

This morning my eye is a little sore when I blink, but fine otherwise.  There's still some redness but that's to be expected.  I'm limiting my time in front of my PC to around 1/2 an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon (which is a severe limitiation!) so as not to strain my eyes too much.

I can start reading from tomorrow, which will be good.   Audio books are fine, but I much prefer to read.  Again, I'll ease myself back into it.

The day after the op

I had the op yesterday and all seemed to go smoothly.  I had a gauze patch to wear until this afternoon and during the night I had a hard plastic shield to tape over my eye so that I didn't do any damage as I slept.

I saw the surgeon/consultant this afternoon and he says it looks good.  Judge for yourself:

You can see the join where the new cornea meets the old most easily to the left of the pupil, about 2/3rds the way across the iris.   You can also see the stitches - these are the dark lines going around the graft from the outside in.

I don't have much pain - there's some when I blink but that's about it.   Both eyes are watering more than usual but that's no bid deal

Pre-Op Calibration

This is a chart that you see when you have your eyes tested.

It's called a Snellen chart (this one can't be used for an accurate diagnosis of how good your vision is - there are too many unknowns.  I can use it to measure relative changes in my vision over time)     With my contact lens in my right eye and the chart at arms length, I can read the line second from the bottom (the one that begins X  D F H).  I am very happy with this.

With my left eye, I cannot see the A.   If I move my head I can see a ghost of the right hand sloping side of the letter A.  Everything else is a blur.

I know that progress after the graft will be slow but it should be measureable over time.








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Keratconus and Me

I have an eye condition known as kerataconus that affects both my eyes.   This (non-contagious!) problem causes changes to the cornea which means that my vision has deteriorated over a number of years.  I was diagnosed over twenty five years ago.  At first normal spectacles corrected the problem but there’s limit to what they can do and I was switched to using rigid gas permeable contact lenses around 18 years ago.  Both my eyes are affected, my left eye is worse than my right.  The condition itself is not painful, but many people find that the use of rigid lenses over a long period causes problems in itself.  (Getting a piece of grit trapped between the lens and the eye is very painful!)

These work well for me - although not everyone can tolerate them - and still provide very good vision in my right eye.   Kerataconus makes the cornea bulge and thin and one of the potential consequences is that one of the internal layers of the cornea can rupture.  This results in some of the eye’s internal fluid seeping through into the cornea causing a cloudy patch - this is corneal hydrops.  In August 2010 this happened to me.  Hydrops often clears up after two-three months, but in my case it did not and I was left with a small bump and scarring on the front of the cornea.  Both of these mean that I cannot wear a contact lens in my left eye which means that my vision in that eye is very blurred.  The scarring also partially covers my pupil causing further dimness in that eye.

Once it had became clear (in February 2011) that the hydrops was not going to clear up, I was put on a waiting list for a corneal graft (“corneal transplant”).  The cornea does not have a blood supply, which means that when it comes to a transplant, tissue typing is not required.   The new cornea can still be rejected but the rejection can be controlled if discovered quickly (and is normally spotted very quickly since it often results in a sudden deterioration in vision).  If the graft is rejected, then second grafts are often tissue typed.    The lack of a blood supply means that the cornea is slow to heal so the graft can take 12-18 months to fully integrate with the surrounding tissue.   When I went on the list, I was told that the wait would be three to four months.  I have now been told that I will have the operation on 7th June 2011.

I plan to keep this blog to record my progress after the operation.

After developing hydrops and doing some research on-line, I discovered the UK kerataconus self help and support group which is an excelled resource for those with the disease.  The forums are a great source of “real world” experiences (rather than the sometimes ‘theoretical’ and slightly sterile information given by health professionals).