Archive for category: Keratoconus

It’s been a while since I provided an update. As the saying goes… no news is good news. Things have been going very well with my eyes. I just got my new prescription and can see better now than at any time since my surgery (about 20/30). So let me step back and fill in my story since my last post. In the spring of last year I had another broken suture. It felt like I had a hair in my eye that I couldn’t rinse out. When I went to see my doctor, he ended removing the rest of my sutures – the running stitch and the outer sutures. I had some pain for a few days, and ended up going back about a week later because of redness and pain. He prescribed steroid drops for a few weeks, then I was fine. Removing the sutures definitely changed my vision. As my eyes settled, my prescription no longer matched my eye. I also didn’t have the up-close clear vision anymore; I used to be able to read up close small print very well with my corrected eye. I ended up getting reading glasses to help with the reading, a natural occurrence for those in their mid-40’s . I waited until this year to get a new prescription for my everyday glasses. With my new prescription I can see things pretty well. I still have some ghosting and blurriness, but I can make out street signs and license plates and read most text captions on the TV. I still have issues with my night vision, so I try not to drive at night, but I can if I have to. No rejection scares, and very little irritation. Things have been great.

I haven’t written a post  in while. As they say, no news is good news. Everything had been going well for the most part. My vision has been pretty stable and I’ve seen slight improvements in my vision during eye exams. I got my last pair of glasses in March. I didn’t find glasses that I liked at my optometrist’s office, so I ordered a couple pairs from Glasses.com. They did a surprisingly good job filling the prescription. With such a high index, I didn’t know what to expect. One of the pairs had Transitions lenses, which tint in sunlight. I wasn’t sure how I would like not having control over the tint, but those has worked out well. I always seem to lose or break the snap-on sunglasses that came with past frames. The Transitions lenses haven’t been an annoyance when moving indoors, which was a concern. I only wish they tinted a little darker, and a little quicker.

Now, on to the incident. This past Sunday, I started to feel some irritation in my left eye. It felt a lot like I had an eyelash in my eye. Monday during work, my eye was still watering. I bought some wetting drops, but I still felt the irritation. My eye was also starting to get a little red. By Tuesday morning I know it was time to see Dr. Chow. I scheduled an emergency appointment and he was able to see me later that morning. He poked around in my eye and noticed that one suture was loose. He decided to remove two of the sutures on the left side, about a 30 second procedure. I could tell as soon as he was done that the main source of the irritation was gone.

This was my first broken suture. I had a feeling about what was going, since some of the stories I read mentioned the sensation I was feeling. I was a little concerned because the stories mentioned the sutures don’t always come out cleanly or can become buried in the graft. My transplant took place more than 3 years ago, so I was expecting the worst. During the procedure I felt a little tug, but no pain and no other issues.

I went home and took a long nap. When I woke up I felt a lot better.

It has now been almost 20  months since my surgery. Things are still going well. I took a plane trip to California without any incidents. I’ve heard about some people have problems because of the cabin pressure. My vision improvement seems to be pretty stable now. I haven’t had any more stitches removed since the first few months after surgery. My doctor said that he wanted to keep them in since I haven’t had any problems with broken stitches or infection. I am seeing him now about every three months. He says that everything is looking good. There are no signs of rejection and everything looks fine. I am still seeing in the 20/40 to 20/50 range in my left eye.

After a year, I still get questions from friends and family about the surgery and how my eyes are doing. I tell them that vision is better, but not as good as I hoped it would be. While it’s great to be able to see better, things are still not very sharp. While the distortion used to be a lot more, almost like a circular blob, the distortion that I see now with glasses is almost like a letter V. If I look at a point of light, like a stop light, I see a bunch of lights overlapped. My glasses bring these lights closer together, which allows me to see the object more clearly, but because they aren’t brought all the way together these object is still fuzzy.

Hopefully my vision continue to improve. I still have a difficult time driving at night and seeing things at a distance. But I can see many things more clearly. I can see the score of the game on TV without having to ask my wife. I can read close-up text better with my left eye than I can with my non-surgical eye. I haven’t had any problems with infection, rejection or broken stitches. I feel blessed to be able to see better!

Things have been going well since my last post. I’ve noticed slow, but steady improvement in my vision. Things have stabilized with my eye pressure. At my eye appointment a few weeks ago they were able to correct my vision to 20/40… a blurry 20/40, but definitely better than the 20/300 I was getting before. I was scheduled to visit my optometrist this week to get fitted for new eyeglasses, but had a minor setback last weekend. I woke up last Sunday with pain, redness and severe light sensitivity, which are all symptoms of rejection. I got in touch with my doctor that day. I bumped up my dropped and was planning to see him on Monday. When I woke up, all of the pain and light sensitivity was gone, but I still had some redness. He asked me to continue taking 4 drops a day for 2 weeks and mentioned that I should delay the eye appointment. I was back to normal by Tuesday. I’m still not sure that caused the incident; it might have been sleeping on my eye wrong, not getting enough sleep, or something else.

I also had a milestone this week – I was able to confirm that I have some depth perception. This past weekend my wife and I took the kids to see a short Halloween-themed 3-D movie. While I didn’t get the full experience, I was able to see many of the 3-D elements. Prior to my surgery, I was unable to perceive any of the 3-D effects when I watched a 3-D movie at the Detroit auto show. I’ll probably try this again after I get my glasses. So far so good though. Maybe one day I’ll be able to see what this 3-D craze is all about.

It’s been a while since my last post at Week 9. I had just had my first two stitches removed. I had two more stitches removed in May, and two more removed last Thursday. My vision is pretty much unchanged since last month. My health has been excellent, and I haven’t had any problems with pain, infections or (much) light-sensitivity. I am looking forward to the day when I can get fitted for a new eyeglass prescription so that I can see if going through this procedure was worth it. Without having clear vision outside of 6″ – 8″, it’s hard to tell. My doctors continues to tell me that everything is going well. The cornea is still clear, and the donor cornea has a good shape. He said that he will continue to remove stitches to fine-tune the shape, so I will continue to have monthly appointments for the foreseeable future. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a prescription within the next couple of months.

I continue to use a couple of informal barometers to check my progress. My DirecTV box has a bright blue ring in the front, so I continue to check the spread pattern of my vision. I mocked up an example in my Week 9 post. The pattern is still round, just a little wider and softer. This explains why my vision is still blurry at distances. I can also see a pattern in my non-surgical eye, but the spread is less and more random. My glasses bring everything into focus, so I continue to be hopeful that the same can be done in my surgical eye. It is difficult to remember how bad my vision was prior to the surgery, but I do remember that I my vision was equally blurry  whether I was looking through my lens or not. I am also able to read close-up text through my surgical eye, such as the fine print found on the back of a credit card. This is something that I can’t even do with my non-surgical eye. I have also noticed a significant reduction is nighttime glare, which makes it easier to drive at night. Unfortunately, since neither eye has good vision at a distance, I still limit my night driving when I can.

So that’s about it for now. Hopefully I can continue to be healthy and more toward better vision. I’m down to three drops of the OmniPred per day, and I only take Vigamox for two days immediately after stitches are removed. Oh yeah, stitches being removed… The first set of stitches that I had removed was pain free. I felt pretty good the day-of, but the next day I had some redness, light-sensitivity and a little bit of pain. I had a little bit of pain while the second set of stitches were removed, and had the same pain the next day. I had the same pain following removal of the third set, so know I think I know what to expect… typically about 24 hours of discomfort and redness. After that it’s back to normal.

If I’ll try to post updates more frequently if something changes. Otherwise, no news is good news.

I has been about a month since my last post, and almost seven weeks since my surgery. The swelling is pretty much gone, and I don’t have as much sensitivity to light. Up until about a week ago I was still having problems with light during my morning commute. The sun was right at eye level, so it felt like a flashlight (a really bright, hot one) was being shined in my eyes, even with sunglasses on. I still need to wear sunglasses when the sun is out, but driving is a lot better now.

My vision is still very blurry, but I can see things that I couldn’t see before. My vision still changes from day to day, so some days I can barely read text on my computer screen, and other days it’s just a blur. One point of reference that I use to test my vision us reading the address on envelopes. I few weeks ago I could read the address from about 3 inches way. Now I can read the address from about 14 inches away.

My next appointment is in about 10 days when I’m supposed to start getting stitches removed. That should be interesting…,