It is now eight months after the last major surgery.
The “residue” that was clouding the cornea cleared up, and I didn’t develop the “skin” over the lens that required machine gun laser surgery in the other eye.
The vision is now better than in the other eye. It’s brighter due to less deterioration in that optic nerve. Vision in the first eye is blurry and peripheral vision is not terrific – that’s the first part of the visual field that goes in a slow optic nerve deterioration. Peripheral vision is not great in the other eye either. I can pass a driving test to get a license, but am not comfortable driving. No great loss since I had five accidents when my vision was better. You don’t want me on the roads.
The hyper sensitivity to light – and pretty much everything else – remained. They attempted to help by placing plugs in my tear ducts. This prevents the tears from instantly vanishing from the eye. That worked pretty well, but one of the plugs kept scratching my eye. I returned to the office, and they ‘repositioned’ that plug. The plug in the other eye also scratched so I went back and discovered the fellow who had ‘repositioned’ the other plug accidentally pushed it all the way into the tear duct. If an infection develops it will have to be removed – by cutting it out of my face with a scalpel. Well at least I have something other than the vision to worry about.
On monday July 25, I went back for a checkup and the layer of cornea tissue in the December surgery eye is being rejected. I hadn’t noticed any more aching and paining than usual. Rejection can nearly always be stopped with steroid eye drops, so they put in drops every five minutes for an hour, then sent me home with drops to use every hour for four days. I returned on the thursday and the drops had barely made a dent in the rejection.
Problem: the steroid eye drops raise the eye pressure. Raised eye pressure damages the optic nerve. They can replace a cornea, not an optic nerve. And this was my better, brighter eye! Going back tomorrow morning to see if there is any improvement.
The rejection was stopped by the eye drops and the eye pressure did not rise. I woke up sunday with no vision in my right eye. Not using the ‘B’ word. The vision slowly faded back in over about five minutes. That’s the optic nerve going…
I wish you good luck!