a view through my own eyes

Back to the hospital again today. This time for the pleasure of seeing the cornea consultant as a followup to the cornea rejection attempt earlier this year.

Whilst I waited for my appointment the head orthoptist walked past, noticed me, stopped and decided to check out how I was getting on – this was despite the fact that I saw her colleague earlier in the week. But who was I to grumble. Cosmetically things look good, so no complaints there, however there is a very slight wobble motion wise when I am moving the eye. This should sort itself out as the muscles and whatnot heal over the coming weeks. Anyway I have to see her again in early July so that is not a concern.

Anyway on to the cornea consultant, he takes a good look round the left eye, then decides to take a good look round the right eye. He then asks whether I am slightly sensitive to light in the left eye – I confirm that I am and that my night vision is noticeably better in that eye. Then he tells me that I am developing a cataract in my left eye.

The good news is that the cornea graft is looking very good and we can say that the rejection attempt is over, the bad part though is that the steroid eye drops (Pred Forte) that sort out cornea rejections on rare occasions cause cataracts.

At this point the head orthoptist appears and the conclusion is, to get the squint stuff sorted out over the coming weeks, then see the cornea consultant in three months at which point we then sort out the cataract situation. The wait for cataract operations is only a matter of weeks apparently.

Interestingly since I saw the optician a few weeks ago, my vision has changed again in my left eye for the better and there is no longer an asymmetrical astigmatism, this is something that we will keep an eye on. The important bit at the moment is to get the squint stuff finished off.

As the consultant put it, when I saw him in September 2005, I could not see with my left eye, and was advised that I would need a cornea transplant and probably squint surgery. Those two parts are done, I can now see with the eye although things are still being sorted out, the cataract issue is he says not really a worry and are straight forward to do. In my case though it may be best to do it under a general anesthetic due to the cornea situation. One bonus though that the consultant pointed out was that they can put a lens in to match the power of the other eye, so at least any glasses/contact lenses can be the same strength.

Still at the end of the day a cataract is fairly quick and easy to do, otherwise they would not have done around ten of them last tuesday when they were doing my squint op.