UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

I have a colleague who has the desk next to mine in the office, and yesterday we were discussing health matters.

Never having mentioned it before I asked if she'd heard of Keratoconus. Heard of it she replied, I have got it!!

Unbelievable, two of us in the same small organisation, managing OK and having worked together of some years, not realising that we both had the same condition.

I'm pleased to report hers is very mild and she manages with specs....I proudly told her that mine was far worse as I had RGP's...well maybe proudly is the wrong word!

I used to work with a glasses wearing KC sufferer.

He told my HR manager that KC was quite livable with and that everyone could get correction with contact lenses and I was a big whinger.

It took social services to go in and sort it out before I had them back on side.

Funny how people react to their own conditions and their interpretation of them.

D

A few years ago I was having a few drinks down the pub when I was chatting to a girl I'd recruited several years before.

She mentioned that she had an eye condition.
- Oh yes, what is it?
- you'll never have heard of it!
- try me!
- OK... it's called Keratoconus!
- heard of it! I've got it too

I swear that she thought I was trying to pick her up! She's managing rather well with her KC though, but promises to look in at the forum occassionally.

No longer can we say KC is a rare condition then?

Hehe well i only knew my twin sister before i came here, so can't give you any stories!! LOL!!

Sweet X x X

I was really battling when an American corneal specialst who had been climbing at during a 6 month stint at the Royal Eye and Ear hospital came into my parents shop for a butane cylinder. He got me into the eye and ear, they could not fit me either but it was worth a try.

I work in a small town that seems to be a cluster point for eye troubles in general and KC in particular.

I had a wedding some years ago, and the bridegroom confided in me that he had an eye condition, and would probably not be able to read the hymn sheet. What condition?

Keratoconus.

Never mind, I said, I've got that too. I'll do a couple extra large print words so the we can both make our way through the hymns. He said after wards that I was the only other person whom he had ever met with KC,

Andrew

Isn't it a dam small world!!! LOL!!!!

Sweet X x X

Interesting actually, in some places I read that KC is a "rare" condition, then again I have read in many of my brother's medical textbooks that it is a "fairly common" condition...

I think with the preop checks done for laser surgery KC is being diagnosed more frequently. These diagnosis' are almost subclinical where the person has lived with glasses and wants to do without but never gotten to the stage they have real problems, and probably never would. There is a theory that many family members of kcers have a halted form of KC if studied close enough, it never progressed but may have. This is being studied here at the moment. KC like many diseases has degrees not many of us get to the stage it affects our lives, for those who it does there is here. It is also why we need to be cautious with new mebers we dont want to scare there socks off, because it may not get that bad. I have met 3 or 4 people with KC who have walked through our shop doors. In some ways I think our shop is a bit of a support centre. The locals know I have had grafts and where to find me.