Legally Blind
Would that be Reese Witherspoon's last outing as Elle? No! It's me. In my right eye at least.
I knew my vision had been getting steadily worse, but it took a perceptible drop about five, six weeks ago. Fortunately I already had an appointment with the eye doctor last week. He referred me to the cornea specialist, and I saw him yesterday. In very short order I was scheduled for eye surgery.
If I could read I could find out the exact name of the procedure they're going to do, but essentially it's the newer version of a corneal transplant. The doctor kept referring to a "graft." As they don't so much replace the entire cornea as a layer of epithelial cells, I can understand why. Somewhere in this process I will also get a cataract removed.
This all stems from the Fuchs Dystrophy. That causes the corneas to retain water and get misshapen, which, of course, distorts the vision. The cataract occludes vision. Oh, and did I mention the diabetic retinopathy? That's been treated extensively with lasers, but there's no undoing the damage that's already been done.
This explains why both eye doctors were quick to warn me that there are no guarantees about the surgery. True, if we do nothing, there's no hope for improvement, probably not even for maintaining the status quo. However, the operation could have a negative effect on my vision or the graft could just not work. Still, there is the possibility that I will regain some of my vision . I choose to be optimistic and give it a try.
Still have the hurdle to jump of getting checked out to see if I'm a good candidate for surgery. (For example, they'll check to see if I have syphillis. I'm fairly confident I don't.) That happens Dec. 4th. If green-lighted, the surgery will happen Jan. 10th.
These are exciting times.
I knew my vision had been getting steadily worse, but it took a perceptible drop about five, six weeks ago. Fortunately I already had an appointment with the eye doctor last week. He referred me to the cornea specialist, and I saw him yesterday. In very short order I was scheduled for eye surgery.
If I could read I could find out the exact name of the procedure they're going to do, but essentially it's the newer version of a corneal transplant. The doctor kept referring to a "graft." As they don't so much replace the entire cornea as a layer of epithelial cells, I can understand why. Somewhere in this process I will also get a cataract removed.
This all stems from the Fuchs Dystrophy. That causes the corneas to retain water and get misshapen, which, of course, distorts the vision. The cataract occludes vision. Oh, and did I mention the diabetic retinopathy? That's been treated extensively with lasers, but there's no undoing the damage that's already been done.
This explains why both eye doctors were quick to warn me that there are no guarantees about the surgery. True, if we do nothing, there's no hope for improvement, probably not even for maintaining the status quo. However, the operation could have a negative effect on my vision or the graft could just not work. Still, there is the possibility that I will regain some of my vision . I choose to be optimistic and give it a try.
Still have the hurdle to jump of getting checked out to see if I'm a good candidate for surgery. (For example, they'll check to see if I have syphillis. I'm fairly confident I don't.) That happens Dec. 4th. If green-lighted, the surgery will happen Jan. 10th.
These are exciting times.