UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

Following on from 'Cornea Graft - please help'

I have managed to get hold of the consultant and asked him to answer a few more questions i had. He said that as my left eye has 20/20 vision i could continue as i am but a couple of things could happen:

1 - I could get Hydrop (think thats what he called it). This is were the cornea gets so thin that it splits and fills with fluid. Apparently this is extremely painful and a full graft would be needed if this happened.

2 - My brain could get used to not seeing out of that eye and i could develop a squint so my bad eye becomes lazy and my eyes will be looking in different directions.

3 - None of the these could happen and i will just stay the same as i am now.

So - with the above in mind i am leaning towards having the graft as it would be better than any of the above happening. The consultant also said that if he was me he would have it done. I also don't think i have a choice now that i know the implications of not having it done.

I will post my decision on this thread in the next couple of days.

Thanks for the update; it is good that you have taken control of this process. You are the one who lives with the consequences of acting or not acting on the advice you are given, so it is right that you are aware that the final decision is yours.

All the best.

Andrew

Well, I'm glad you asked and told us that!
From personal experience, I'd play down the hydrops. I've had 4 - the first two resulted in the world being a complete white-out through the eye in question for about a month, and took several weeks before I could wear the lens in that eye again, and they were a bit sensitive with reduced lens tolerance for a few months.
The 3rd and 4th more much smaller - bits of mistiness inthe vision, and I had the lens back in a weeks or so later.
People were talking about maybe needing transplants at the time of the first two, but they both healed up well enough that the prospect of grafts went away. Until the last year, and I had a transplant (that I now heartily regret, that's another story) 28 years after the first hydrops.
Hydrops painful? - a bit sore, but nothing too much to worry about. NOthing more than a headache that a paracetamol tablet would take care of. I've had worse eye pain just from wearing a lens too long.
Maybe I was luckY???? - my 4 hydropses were no more painful than the eye after the graft, and that was far less painful than the splitting headache I got from dehydration from fasting before an anesthetic.
Well, OK, there are many different views on the role, importance treatment, etc etc of hydrops. The above is just my personal experience and maybe I'm unussual. Well, I am, because having 4 hydrops is virtually unknown!
OTOH I fully understand the point about becoming one-eyed.
If you have much better vision in one eye than the other, then it certainly is possible to come to use the vision from the good eye, and the brain learns to ignore the blurred vision from the other eye.
I've been wearing one lens at a time for years now, and my brain can't cope with binocular vision if it gets two good images.
ANd if one is one-eyed, it makes it hard to judge distances properly, and then driving is difficult to dangerous, and playing certain sports gets very difficult, and many more things.
So if something can keep your binocular vision because you start to lose it, that is certainly soemthing to think about.
Rosemary

Well..... Finally decided

I have contacted my consultant and informed him i wish to proceed with the graft. Scary!

Thanks to all who have posted responses on my threads and no doubt i will be posting many more in the future to bug you all about things.

Thanks agan