Keratoconus

Last night I came home to a voicemail notifying me that my contact lenses were in and that the optometrist's practice is closing it's doors tomorrow (Saturday). I'm rather sad about this because I really like the people who run the practice. They've had a rough go of it the last year since the doctor passed away from cancer.

Thankfully I have a whole year to find another doctor. I've decided to see if I can find someone who has a lot of experience with Keratoconus. This is the problem in my right eye. I've been asked about it several times lately. I'm still trying to learn about it myself since I have never heard of it until I was diagnosed. As you can see from the article, this is generally inherited. I've asked around a little bit but so far no relative has confessed to having the same thing.

WebMD does a pretty good job of explaining (high-level) it in this article. [If you want more detailed information, check out www.keratoconus.com.]

Thankfully, this didn't start until about 4 or 5 years ago for me (age 27-28) which is pretty late in the scheme of when it typically shows up. My late doctor mentioned that because of the lateness of it's arrival, she didn't think that I would ever have to have a corneal transplant. However, if the rate of change of my cornea increases, she may have been wrong.

I did have a topographical map of my cornea done my eye about a year ago. The instrument they talk about in the article is kind of interesting. They first numb the eye and then take a little laser type of pen and press it to certain locations in the eye. I didn't totally figure out how it worked but it appeared to either work on some sort of light refraction or, more likely, light reflection (versus time) method of measurment. The whole topography process easily took less than 10 minutes.

The last part of the article talks about treatment. Basically, my doctor said no more glasses. With glasses, the lens sits further from the eye than with contacts and the distance allows for more change. I had soft contacts until June 2007. At that point, the doctor said I could continue wearing soft lenses but that they could only correct to 20/60 and, if that was acceptable to me, that's what they would do. Otherwise I needed to transition to rigid lenses.

So, I transitioned to rigid lenses. Anyone who was around me for the next month or so will probably remember the difficulty of the transition.

Contact lenses reshape they eye. They also have to build up some sort of callous on the eye in order for the eye to stop trying to reject them. Soft lenses are usually all about the same diameter and, because of their softness, don't reshape the eye as much as rigid lenses. Rigid lenses come in many different diameters because different people have different sight windows. (I don't really know what it's called but that's my term for it.)

When my doctor first tried to fit me for rigid lenses, she tried some really small ones. I couldn't see a thing. She said that my eye was trying to look out the wrong part of the curvature. Eventually, she sent me for the topographical map so that they could get the right diameter of lens (as well as to know how the lens should be shaped to accomodate the cones and so that if I got a job out-of-state, my new doctor would know where I started).

Anyway, it took my eyes a very long time to adjust because the rigid lenses are a smaller diameter than the soft lenses were and they don't bend to the eye.

That eye still cannot be corrected to 20/20 but the doctors do a pretty good job. I'm praying it will never get so bad that I need a transplant.