UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

I was diagnosed with keratoconus at 19. I am now 28 and I need something to correct my vision in the meantime. Ive tried contacts and they are way too uncomfortable so at this point in time my only option is eyeglasses. However when I went for the eye exam they could no get an accurate prescription and could not find my retina and refered me to a specialist who they said could give me a more precise prescription. If it is that I get a more accurate prescription will this even help my vision any more than the other prescription seeing that they were having difficulty finding my retina?

Hello and welcome to the forum.

What type of contact lenses have you tried? There are lots of different types for us these days including special soft lenses for KC. So it is worth asking to try different types.

I'm not sure what you mean by they 'could not find the retina'. Were they trying to use a machine to determine your prescription rather than inserting lenses in a frame and getting you to read a chart?

Glasses can work for mild keratoconus and for moderate cases glasses are likely to give some improvement in vision. However prescribing glasses for keratoconus is not necessarily straightforward - especially to the 'better or worse?' questions where we may find some letters on the chart are better and some worse. So the opticians may need to spend more time to optimise the prescription. Similarly we have to be realistic and appreciate that we are unlikely to get the same level of vision with glasses as contact lenses.

Lia

What's better, left or right? I hate those questions! Well... the left one is slightly sharper but I see about eight different versions, whereas the one on the right is just the one big blob of something; at least there's only one of them though

Did you try hard or soft lenses? I find soft lenses can be comfortable for many hours, so it's not the end of the world. There's many different types and brands so definitely worth trying others.

Personally, I wear soft lenses throughout the day (CooperVision Proclear toric) then change to glasses when I get home and my eyes are feeling tired. Very rare anything's going to be 'perfect' with keratoconus, but you learn to live with it... mostly.