I thought I would give a heads up a little early about something that's coming up in my life that might take me away for a while. I am scheduled to have eye surgery on April 29th and I'm probably not going to be staring at a computer for a while after that.
After meeting with a corneal specialist it has been determined that I need a new corneal transplant and while they are doing that they can also put a new lens in my eye. Fixing 2 problems at once. It's good news and I'm excited at the possibility of seeing out of my left eye again. There are a couple of things that make me nervous and the closer it gets to that time I'm sure I'll get more nervous but it's manageable now.
The first thing I'm nervous about is the cost. My last surgery was at the end of the year and I didn't have to shell out too much money before I met my out of pocket maximum for the year. Since this is happening earlier in the year I'll have to pay more because I'm no where close to reaching that maximum. It sucks because I had such great plans for my tax refund but I'll get through this.
The other thing that I'm worried about is actually a good thing. I'm worried about seeing again. I know that sounds weird but after not being able to see really anything out of the left eye for 7 months and then (hopefully) being able to see things again is going to send my brain into overload and I'm imaging I'll have a VERY bad headache for a couple of weeks while my brain adjusts to the new inputs.
I've got my next game all recorded and I'm starting to edit it. I'll start posting that game next week as tomorrow is my last video for Lego Harry Potter (years 5-7). I'm not going to tell you what game it is but I hope you like it as it's my favorite game of that particular genre. I've also finished filming the whole things so I know how long it will take to post videos. It will run from next week through most of June.
Now I'm sure you're thinking that that would give me plenty of time to film new things (or finish up filming old thing) between the date of surgery and the end of June but like I said before I probably won't want to do that due to the eye strain of staring at a computer screen or TV screen for a while. I'll try to film some things in games I have in progress but I also have to have time to edit what I've already got done.
I think I'm going to spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to do with my YouTube channel going forward. I started the channel to force myself to finish games and it has certainly helped me to do that. But unfortunately it's a lot of work to film, edit and post videos while working a full time job and trying to spend time doing my other hobbies.
And there's the rub. I haven't had a whole lot of time to do my other hobbies. I can't remember when the last time I read a book. I know I'm in the middle of one (The Book Thief) but with all the eye drama it's just been too hard to read at times. I also like to cross stitch and I'm working on a large project for my dad. I've told him that he can't die until it's finished and at the rate I'm going it's going to be another 15-20 years before it's done. He turns 80 this year.
I guess what I'm getting at is that while I love to play games and make videos and post them to YouTube, I love to do other things as well. I just don't have the time to everything that I use to before I started YouTube. Every time I look at the analytics and what I want to do with my life I think it's not worth the effort any more at the expense of my other hobbies. But then someone comments on a video, or I get a new subscriber and I feel guilty about walking away . . . especially with some games unfinished.
It's a problems I'm going to be thinking a lot about while I'm out of commission for a month or so. So even though videos should be going up while I'm out there might be a lag before other videos get posted once the next game is done. If you can think of reasons to keep on posting . . . or reasons to quit let me know.
(and yes, I know I need to post a Working Girl's review of Band of Bugs and Lego Harry Potter (years 5-7)
Showing posts with label eyes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eyes. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Friday, January 18, 2019
Eye update and current life evaluation
So I was out on disability for 2 months after the accident. I returned to work the week after Thanksgiving full time and it took a while to get back in the swing of things. The good news is that I was already working from home 3 days a week so my boss just let me work from home full time until I felt comfortable driving in the office. It's an hour commute each way looking directly in to the sun both ways. In January I started coming in on Fridays (traffic's lighter) and in February I'll start back on my 2 days a week in the office.
Speaking of driving, I HATE IT. I have no depth perception and it's really scary when there's moving vehicles all around you. I'm having the hardest time with the side to side perspective. If I'm in the inside lane, all the traffic coming from the other direction look like they are coming straight at me. I know they're not (at least I hope they're not) but it still looks that way to me. I only drive when absolutely necessary. And I might be like that for a long time.
The doctor wants to see if I can keep my original corneal transplant. It got cloudy with the trauma but has been clearing up gradually since then. I've been seeing my eye doctor every 2 weeks since the accident. If it continues to clear up I won't have to have another transplant. If it doesn't . . . then I'll have to have my name put back on the transplant list and wait my time until it comes up. Whether my name will come up faster because I've already had one or slower . . . because I've already had one, I don't know. They won't fix the inside of my eye until they know what the outside (cornea) is going to do.
So, if everything continues to heal and my cornea clears up I might need just one surgery to put another lens in my eye. It's going to be more complicated than a regular cataract surgery but essentially the same type of surgery since I don't have the little sleeve pocket that the lens usually sits in so they'll have to improvise something to make sure the lens stays in place and doesn't move around in my eye.
Either way, no matter what happens any surgery is still going to be months away for me. I've been trying to find my "new normal" and get back in to a regular swing of life. That mostly consists of me sitting at home doing very little after work because my eyes are so tired by the time I'm done. i also sleep a lot on the weekends (which messes up my sleep schedule during the week for work).
I have started playing video games again but most of the time my heart isn't in it. I've started posting again this month but only 2 days a week instead of 3. But I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I've begone to question if I should continue recording and posting to YouTube. There's so much time, and vision, involved that my current circumstance is only making more difficult.
I started my YouTube channel to help force me to finish games. I figured if I took the time to post of video of a game I was making a commitment to actually finishing the game. But since it's so much harder to play the game, and then edit the video for a game, I'm starting to think it's not worth it for me anymore. And that makes me sad.
I've actually finished a bunch of games because of my YouTube videos. I'm afraid if I stop posting then my finish rate will just go down. But on the other hand it's just so labor intensive for me right now when I'm already struggling to do normal things. And while I'm proud of each and everyone of the people who have subscribed to my channel my analytics tell me that's not who's watching my videos (and they don't watch for very long). If I'm putting all that strain on my eyes I really have to think if it's worth it to continue.
I might be healing physically from the accident, but the emotional, psychological and mental process of healing and coming to grips with the fact that I'm now temporarily (hopefully) half blind and will be for possibly another year or more is progressing much slower. I cry and small stupid things. If I miss something because I couldn't see it I cry even more. It's a process and it will take time and I know I'll get there but I have to look at all the things in my life and see what things are helpful to me and what things might actually be harmful to me.
Spending a lot of time and effort to do a simple thing like play a video game and edit the video might be more than I can handle. I've told myself that I will finish the games I currently have in rotation (i.e. whatever I'm in the mood to play at that time) and see how I feel after that. Some of those games are long (like Lost Odyssey) and I might have to make a decision about those earlier than that. The problem is I don't like to leave things half finished. If I stopped posting videos in the middle of a play through of a game, even if I continued to play it "off line" from YouTube, it would still feel unfinished.
I've got a lot of decisions in my life and things I've got to deal with now. I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist. But I know things will be better because I want them to and I will work towards that to try and make that happen. It's just that this is where my life is now and I've got to deal with it the best way that I can for the time being. If anything changes, I'll let you all know.
Speaking of driving, I HATE IT. I have no depth perception and it's really scary when there's moving vehicles all around you. I'm having the hardest time with the side to side perspective. If I'm in the inside lane, all the traffic coming from the other direction look like they are coming straight at me. I know they're not (at least I hope they're not) but it still looks that way to me. I only drive when absolutely necessary. And I might be like that for a long time.
The doctor wants to see if I can keep my original corneal transplant. It got cloudy with the trauma but has been clearing up gradually since then. I've been seeing my eye doctor every 2 weeks since the accident. If it continues to clear up I won't have to have another transplant. If it doesn't . . . then I'll have to have my name put back on the transplant list and wait my time until it comes up. Whether my name will come up faster because I've already had one or slower . . . because I've already had one, I don't know. They won't fix the inside of my eye until they know what the outside (cornea) is going to do.
So, if everything continues to heal and my cornea clears up I might need just one surgery to put another lens in my eye. It's going to be more complicated than a regular cataract surgery but essentially the same type of surgery since I don't have the little sleeve pocket that the lens usually sits in so they'll have to improvise something to make sure the lens stays in place and doesn't move around in my eye.
Either way, no matter what happens any surgery is still going to be months away for me. I've been trying to find my "new normal" and get back in to a regular swing of life. That mostly consists of me sitting at home doing very little after work because my eyes are so tired by the time I'm done. i also sleep a lot on the weekends (which messes up my sleep schedule during the week for work).
I have started playing video games again but most of the time my heart isn't in it. I've started posting again this month but only 2 days a week instead of 3. But I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I've begone to question if I should continue recording and posting to YouTube. There's so much time, and vision, involved that my current circumstance is only making more difficult.
I started my YouTube channel to help force me to finish games. I figured if I took the time to post of video of a game I was making a commitment to actually finishing the game. But since it's so much harder to play the game, and then edit the video for a game, I'm starting to think it's not worth it for me anymore. And that makes me sad.
I've actually finished a bunch of games because of my YouTube videos. I'm afraid if I stop posting then my finish rate will just go down. But on the other hand it's just so labor intensive for me right now when I'm already struggling to do normal things. And while I'm proud of each and everyone of the people who have subscribed to my channel my analytics tell me that's not who's watching my videos (and they don't watch for very long). If I'm putting all that strain on my eyes I really have to think if it's worth it to continue.
I might be healing physically from the accident, but the emotional, psychological and mental process of healing and coming to grips with the fact that I'm now temporarily (hopefully) half blind and will be for possibly another year or more is progressing much slower. I cry and small stupid things. If I miss something because I couldn't see it I cry even more. It's a process and it will take time and I know I'll get there but I have to look at all the things in my life and see what things are helpful to me and what things might actually be harmful to me.
Spending a lot of time and effort to do a simple thing like play a video game and edit the video might be more than I can handle. I've told myself that I will finish the games I currently have in rotation (i.e. whatever I'm in the mood to play at that time) and see how I feel after that. Some of those games are long (like Lost Odyssey) and I might have to make a decision about those earlier than that. The problem is I don't like to leave things half finished. If I stopped posting videos in the middle of a play through of a game, even if I continued to play it "off line" from YouTube, it would still feel unfinished.
I've got a lot of decisions in my life and things I've got to deal with now. I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist. But I know things will be better because I want them to and I will work towards that to try and make that happen. It's just that this is where my life is now and I've got to deal with it the best way that I can for the time being. If anything changes, I'll let you all know.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Out of Commission
So . . . I'm going to be out of commission for a while. Possibly 1-3 months. And all because of an innocent accident.
I was sitting on the floor folding laundry on Saturday afternoon (9/29) when I decided to give my dog a hug who was laying in front of me. I put my hands behind her front legs and started to pull her up. Apparently she didn't want a hug at that time and flipped out and slammed her head directly on to my open left eye. She didn't hit cheek or nose or eye brow. Just a straight hit to my open eye. It happened so fast I didn't have time to blink.
If you've been following my blog for some years now you know I don't have a good history with my eyes. Especially my left one. The one she hit. And this time it's not any better. It's worse. Much worse.
She knocked my contact lens out and my artificial lens I had implanted when I had cataract surgery. When I got to the hospital they said I had ruptured my eye. They took me by ambulance to another hospital where they had people trained for this type of injury. I was only at the other hospital a little less than an hour before they wheeled me in to surgery.
The doctor said that I had lost my pupil, the little pocket that holds the lens and obviously the lens itself. I had also lost a bunch of other stuff in my eye which I don't remember what he called it. My corneal transplant was barely hanging on by a little flap. The surgery that I had that day was just to see if they could reconstruct it to be a eyeball again. I'll have to have additional surgeries to see if/what help they can do to restore any vision in that eye.
After surgery the doctor said he would be happy if I saw light and shadow and movement. I could. It looks like very bad shadow puppets on a very dimly lit wall. I couldn't see enough to tell how many fingers he was holding up and I couldn't see colors or shapes. If everything heals and is okay in a month they'll refer me to a specialist to what they can do for vision.
I will have to have another transplant surgery. Right now I think the only reason I still have an eye is that they could use the existing transplant to close up the eye. The doctor said they didn't have any corneal tissue at the hospital so if they didn't have that to close up the now ruptured hole in my eye I don't know what they would have done.
I don't know know what they are going to do about the lens you normally have in the eye. Not only did I lose the lens, I lost the pocket that the lens sits in. They're going to have to MacGyver something in order to get that to work.
Needless to say I have a long road of surgeries and recoveries ahead of me. This all happened about a week and a half ago so I've had time to calm down, accept my fate and get past the worst of the pain for now. It hasn't been easy. Even typing this is hard and I'm going to have to rest for a long time afterwords to recover.
As for playing video games that's out of the question for now. I do have videos in the can that I could edit and post to my YouTube channel but it hurts to much to look at the screen and those will only last so long and I'm not recording any more. So for the time being I'm taking it easy and contemplating a lot of my life. That's about all I can do at this point. If things change, I'll make another post. Right now my bad eye is watering like crazy and it's making it harder for my good eye to focus.
So, I guess I'm out of commission for while. This is the life for the next several months for this gamer girl. Play on!
I was sitting on the floor folding laundry on Saturday afternoon (9/29) when I decided to give my dog a hug who was laying in front of me. I put my hands behind her front legs and started to pull her up. Apparently she didn't want a hug at that time and flipped out and slammed her head directly on to my open left eye. She didn't hit cheek or nose or eye brow. Just a straight hit to my open eye. It happened so fast I didn't have time to blink.
If you've been following my blog for some years now you know I don't have a good history with my eyes. Especially my left one. The one she hit. And this time it's not any better. It's worse. Much worse.
She knocked my contact lens out and my artificial lens I had implanted when I had cataract surgery. When I got to the hospital they said I had ruptured my eye. They took me by ambulance to another hospital where they had people trained for this type of injury. I was only at the other hospital a little less than an hour before they wheeled me in to surgery.
The doctor said that I had lost my pupil, the little pocket that holds the lens and obviously the lens itself. I had also lost a bunch of other stuff in my eye which I don't remember what he called it. My corneal transplant was barely hanging on by a little flap. The surgery that I had that day was just to see if they could reconstruct it to be a eyeball again. I'll have to have additional surgeries to see if/what help they can do to restore any vision in that eye.
After surgery the doctor said he would be happy if I saw light and shadow and movement. I could. It looks like very bad shadow puppets on a very dimly lit wall. I couldn't see enough to tell how many fingers he was holding up and I couldn't see colors or shapes. If everything heals and is okay in a month they'll refer me to a specialist to what they can do for vision.
I will have to have another transplant surgery. Right now I think the only reason I still have an eye is that they could use the existing transplant to close up the eye. The doctor said they didn't have any corneal tissue at the hospital so if they didn't have that to close up the now ruptured hole in my eye I don't know what they would have done.
I don't know know what they are going to do about the lens you normally have in the eye. Not only did I lose the lens, I lost the pocket that the lens sits in. They're going to have to MacGyver something in order to get that to work.
Needless to say I have a long road of surgeries and recoveries ahead of me. This all happened about a week and a half ago so I've had time to calm down, accept my fate and get past the worst of the pain for now. It hasn't been easy. Even typing this is hard and I'm going to have to rest for a long time afterwords to recover.
As for playing video games that's out of the question for now. I do have videos in the can that I could edit and post to my YouTube channel but it hurts to much to look at the screen and those will only last so long and I'm not recording any more. So for the time being I'm taking it easy and contemplating a lot of my life. That's about all I can do at this point. If things change, I'll make another post. Right now my bad eye is watering like crazy and it's making it harder for my good eye to focus.
So, I guess I'm out of commission for while. This is the life for the next several months for this gamer girl. Play on!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
My Eyes - Part 3 (The Transplant List)
[This is a contination of the story of my eyes. Please read "My Eyes - Part 1 (The Diagnosis" and "My Eyes - Part 2 (The Treatment) prior to reading this.]
When the doctor told me I would need a corneal transplant my mind went numb. Because I didn't know much about the surgery I started imagining the worst. And since I like to write fiction stories my imagination went into overdrive.
One of the possibility is your eye could rupture. For me I was picturing a volcano type eruption coming from my eye. Then there was all the science fiction horrors I imagined. Like would I see things the way the donor sees things? Would there be cellular memory in that if I saw the face of someone the donor knew would I think I knew them as well? Let your imagination go wild with the ideas and I probably already thought about them.
But the two worst ideas I ever had took a long time to just come to grips with. I even have my moments now where those old feelings come back and I have to fight off the feelings of inadequacy.
The first feeling was that I would be turned into something less than human after the transplant surgery. On the surface this doesn't make sense because the donor cornea isn't coming from a cow or anything, but another person. Still human. But when I thought of all the crowns and root canals I've had done to my teeth and the moles I've had removed and the bone they filed off from my right heel I started to think that eventually I'd become something less than human. More metal and parts than human.
I've never been one to even consider plastic surgery for breast implants, or butt implants or whatever, but I started to wonder if those people (and I felt I was becoming one of them) are turning themselves into another species all together. And once I had that thought my imagination went wild. Would I have less rights as someone who's "all human"? While this thought is a gold mine for inspiration for writing a science fiction story it's not something you ever want to consider personally.
The second big thought/fear I had was "will I still be me?" It naturally sprang out of the first, "less than human", thought. Now I was thinking I was turning into something or someone other than myself. This surgery was going to alter who I was by hopefully making it easier for me to see, but would that be all it altered?
For the longest time I didn't feel like myself. And that was even before the surgery. Since I wasn't able to wear a contact lens in my left eye I really couldn't see very much from that side. It made driving scary and difficult especially when trying to navigate around the back of an elevator in a parking garage without trying to hit a car from the other direction. $3,000 dollars later in repairs to my car (and all the elevator had to get done was a new paint job) and I just didn't want to drive any more. I couldn't play video games very well. I couldn't read without concentrating so hard I gave myself a headache. And just walking down the hall left me dragging one hand along a wall of cubes so I could keep myself walking straight. I couldn't recognize anyone's face until they were right on me. Some people thought I was being rude not acknowledging them until they were right there when they had waved from far back. That was life for me and I had to live that way until my name came up on the transplant list that they had a donor.
My name went on the list in May of 2004. By October I knew that I should be having my surgery around January or February of 2005. My surgery did happen in February of 2005 and while I was grateful to finally have a date so I could get it over with it was a long time waiting and my imagination had control of my emotions during that whole time. I spent many lunch hours just sitting at my desk crying as quietly as I could so I wouldn't bother anyone around me. When the thought that you might lose your eye comes up and that every hobby you like to do requires you to see like reading, cross stitching and playing video games you do tend to cry . . . a lot.
There was a bit of a hiccup just before my surgery. When my annual benefits enrollment came around I switch health care providers. I wasn't going to stick with an HMO that was going from $50 a paycheck to $150 a paycheck even if I didn't have a surgery coming up. What that meant was that in January when I switched to my new provider I had to run around getting the proper documentation that the surgery I had scheduled in February was something previously planned, medically necessary and that I had been under care for this condition for at least three years. I think we got everything straightened out the third week of January and my surgery was schedule for Feb. 5th.
I think my surgery was schedule for 3:30 in the afternoon. It was going to be his last one of the day. And since I wasn't allowed to eat anything for 12 hours before surgery I didn't have anything after I went to bed the night before. But then again I didn't really sleep that night anyway. That sinking feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know you have to do something horrible just grew and grew all night and day. I might have even cried all morning long. I don't remember much before the surgery. But I do remember the surgery, but I'll save that for the next post.
When the doctor told me I would need a corneal transplant my mind went numb. Because I didn't know much about the surgery I started imagining the worst. And since I like to write fiction stories my imagination went into overdrive.
One of the possibility is your eye could rupture. For me I was picturing a volcano type eruption coming from my eye. Then there was all the science fiction horrors I imagined. Like would I see things the way the donor sees things? Would there be cellular memory in that if I saw the face of someone the donor knew would I think I knew them as well? Let your imagination go wild with the ideas and I probably already thought about them.
But the two worst ideas I ever had took a long time to just come to grips with. I even have my moments now where those old feelings come back and I have to fight off the feelings of inadequacy.
The first feeling was that I would be turned into something less than human after the transplant surgery. On the surface this doesn't make sense because the donor cornea isn't coming from a cow or anything, but another person. Still human. But when I thought of all the crowns and root canals I've had done to my teeth and the moles I've had removed and the bone they filed off from my right heel I started to think that eventually I'd become something less than human. More metal and parts than human.
I've never been one to even consider plastic surgery for breast implants, or butt implants or whatever, but I started to wonder if those people (and I felt I was becoming one of them) are turning themselves into another species all together. And once I had that thought my imagination went wild. Would I have less rights as someone who's "all human"? While this thought is a gold mine for inspiration for writing a science fiction story it's not something you ever want to consider personally.
The second big thought/fear I had was "will I still be me?" It naturally sprang out of the first, "less than human", thought. Now I was thinking I was turning into something or someone other than myself. This surgery was going to alter who I was by hopefully making it easier for me to see, but would that be all it altered?
For the longest time I didn't feel like myself. And that was even before the surgery. Since I wasn't able to wear a contact lens in my left eye I really couldn't see very much from that side. It made driving scary and difficult especially when trying to navigate around the back of an elevator in a parking garage without trying to hit a car from the other direction. $3,000 dollars later in repairs to my car (and all the elevator had to get done was a new paint job) and I just didn't want to drive any more. I couldn't play video games very well. I couldn't read without concentrating so hard I gave myself a headache. And just walking down the hall left me dragging one hand along a wall of cubes so I could keep myself walking straight. I couldn't recognize anyone's face until they were right on me. Some people thought I was being rude not acknowledging them until they were right there when they had waved from far back. That was life for me and I had to live that way until my name came up on the transplant list that they had a donor.
My name went on the list in May of 2004. By October I knew that I should be having my surgery around January or February of 2005. My surgery did happen in February of 2005 and while I was grateful to finally have a date so I could get it over with it was a long time waiting and my imagination had control of my emotions during that whole time. I spent many lunch hours just sitting at my desk crying as quietly as I could so I wouldn't bother anyone around me. When the thought that you might lose your eye comes up and that every hobby you like to do requires you to see like reading, cross stitching and playing video games you do tend to cry . . . a lot.
There was a bit of a hiccup just before my surgery. When my annual benefits enrollment came around I switch health care providers. I wasn't going to stick with an HMO that was going from $50 a paycheck to $150 a paycheck even if I didn't have a surgery coming up. What that meant was that in January when I switched to my new provider I had to run around getting the proper documentation that the surgery I had scheduled in February was something previously planned, medically necessary and that I had been under care for this condition for at least three years. I think we got everything straightened out the third week of January and my surgery was schedule for Feb. 5th.
I think my surgery was schedule for 3:30 in the afternoon. It was going to be his last one of the day. And since I wasn't allowed to eat anything for 12 hours before surgery I didn't have anything after I went to bed the night before. But then again I didn't really sleep that night anyway. That sinking feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know you have to do something horrible just grew and grew all night and day. I might have even cried all morning long. I don't remember much before the surgery. But I do remember the surgery, but I'll save that for the next post.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
My Eyes - Part 2 (The Treatment)
This is the second entry in "My Eyes" saga so please start reading with "My Eyes - Part 1 (The Diagnosis) so you know what's going on.
Okay, so there's one thing I don't like and that's uncertainty or better yet "the unknown". As much as I wanted to freak out (and I did) about knowing about my condition it helped to know that there was treatment and that things can go on for years before surgery was ever needed.
The first step of treatment was glasses. They don't fix your mis-shappened eye but they will help with your vision. When those don't work you have to move on to contacts.
The fact that I would have to get contacts and my insurance company would pay for them was exciting. The reason why, not so much. You can first start out with soft contact lenses but my eyes had already gone past that point and I had to move to a different kind.
That would be Hard Gas-Permeable ones. And when those didn't work they move you to a HGP lense especially developed for Keratoconus. Fitting a nicely curved hard lens on an eye that is not so nicely curved was aweful. It was painful and it took a couple of years to get the right fit. And then every year my vision had changed because my eyes were getting worse that we had to go through the fitting process all over again.
I can't tell you how many times I just sat in the doctor's office and cried when he would tell me my eyes are getting worse. Just the thought of surgery and the complication and the possible loss of vision in that eye (or the eye itself) was enough to make anyone break down. My doctor was great; he would sit and talk to me and alleviate all my fears before making sure I was okay to drive home. When I finally switched health providers and had to pick another doctor I wasn't sure I would ever find someone as caring and compassionate as that man. I've even recommended him to my parents and anyone still using that HMO.
The special HGP lenses for Keratoconus are meant to try and push back the coning shape of your eye into a more rounded form. They're not very comfortable and just getting through the day at work (on a computer) could be long and painful. I hate wearing shoes and those are usually the first things I take off when I get home, but some days the contact lenses had to come out before I could even think about removing my shoes.
I started playing video games long before I knew I had this problem, but I didn't start playing games online until after I had my contacts. Unfortunately because my eyes hurt so much I ended up playing games with my glasses on instead. This meant that I still had some distortion in my vision since the glasses don't do anything to reshape your eye. Sometimes I wondered if I was just a bad player or if my eyes limited me in how I played.
Eventually you get to the point where your eyes become "contact lens intolerant". That means that your cornea has thinned out so much that putting a small piece of plastic on them become extremely painful. It would be like getting an open wound and just when the first new layer of skin starts to form you keep rubbing it back and forth with a pen or a credit card. The only course then is to stop wearing the contact lenses because you run the risk of rupturing the cornea and losing your eye. If you rupture your eye and all the things inside your eye become things outside your eye . . . well, you're screwed.
I got to that point in January of 2004. I know exactly when because I went on a Hawaiian cruise in December and when I got back my allergies had gone haywire. After seeing my doctor for some new allergy medicine my eyes still weren't getting any better. When I saw my eye doctor he said it was time to start seeing a surgeon.
When I saw the surgeon he told me to stop wearing my contact lens in my left eye and to let it heal for awhile and come back to see him. When I did go back a month later he said it's time for surgery for my left eye.
If you get to the point where you can't wear contact lenses any more you're getting to the point where your cornea might thin out enough that you might rupture it just by rubbing your eye. If you do that you'll lose your eye. So around May of 2004 my doctor put my name on the transplant list for a new cornea.
The next step in the process is a corneal transplant. I was at that stage, but I wasn't ready for it. Over the next 9 month I freaked out almost daily. But I'll save that for the next post.
Okay, so there's one thing I don't like and that's uncertainty or better yet "the unknown". As much as I wanted to freak out (and I did) about knowing about my condition it helped to know that there was treatment and that things can go on for years before surgery was ever needed.
The first step of treatment was glasses. They don't fix your mis-shappened eye but they will help with your vision. When those don't work you have to move on to contacts.
The fact that I would have to get contacts and my insurance company would pay for them was exciting. The reason why, not so much. You can first start out with soft contact lenses but my eyes had already gone past that point and I had to move to a different kind.
That would be Hard Gas-Permeable ones. And when those didn't work they move you to a HGP lense especially developed for Keratoconus. Fitting a nicely curved hard lens on an eye that is not so nicely curved was aweful. It was painful and it took a couple of years to get the right fit. And then every year my vision had changed because my eyes were getting worse that we had to go through the fitting process all over again.
I can't tell you how many times I just sat in the doctor's office and cried when he would tell me my eyes are getting worse. Just the thought of surgery and the complication and the possible loss of vision in that eye (or the eye itself) was enough to make anyone break down. My doctor was great; he would sit and talk to me and alleviate all my fears before making sure I was okay to drive home. When I finally switched health providers and had to pick another doctor I wasn't sure I would ever find someone as caring and compassionate as that man. I've even recommended him to my parents and anyone still using that HMO.
The special HGP lenses for Keratoconus are meant to try and push back the coning shape of your eye into a more rounded form. They're not very comfortable and just getting through the day at work (on a computer) could be long and painful. I hate wearing shoes and those are usually the first things I take off when I get home, but some days the contact lenses had to come out before I could even think about removing my shoes.
I started playing video games long before I knew I had this problem, but I didn't start playing games online until after I had my contacts. Unfortunately because my eyes hurt so much I ended up playing games with my glasses on instead. This meant that I still had some distortion in my vision since the glasses don't do anything to reshape your eye. Sometimes I wondered if I was just a bad player or if my eyes limited me in how I played.
Eventually you get to the point where your eyes become "contact lens intolerant". That means that your cornea has thinned out so much that putting a small piece of plastic on them become extremely painful. It would be like getting an open wound and just when the first new layer of skin starts to form you keep rubbing it back and forth with a pen or a credit card. The only course then is to stop wearing the contact lenses because you run the risk of rupturing the cornea and losing your eye. If you rupture your eye and all the things inside your eye become things outside your eye . . . well, you're screwed.
I got to that point in January of 2004. I know exactly when because I went on a Hawaiian cruise in December and when I got back my allergies had gone haywire. After seeing my doctor for some new allergy medicine my eyes still weren't getting any better. When I saw my eye doctor he said it was time to start seeing a surgeon.
When I saw the surgeon he told me to stop wearing my contact lens in my left eye and to let it heal for awhile and come back to see him. When I did go back a month later he said it's time for surgery for my left eye.
If you get to the point where you can't wear contact lenses any more you're getting to the point where your cornea might thin out enough that you might rupture it just by rubbing your eye. If you do that you'll lose your eye. So around May of 2004 my doctor put my name on the transplant list for a new cornea.
The next step in the process is a corneal transplant. I was at that stage, but I wasn't ready for it. Over the next 9 month I freaked out almost daily. But I'll save that for the next post.
My Eyes - Part I (The Diagnosis)
Okay I've been talking about my eyes for awhile and some of you know the story, but most of you don't. Here it is. It's going to take several posts so it's best to read them in order.
About 10-11 years ago I was in desperate need of a new pair of glasses. I even considered giving contact lenses a try . . . as long as they didn't cost too much. I didn't have any vision coverage through work so everything was going to be paid "out of pocket". So where did I decide to go for a cheap eye exam and glasses? Walmart, of course.
The assistant had me take all kinds of tests with my eyes. For one of them I had to put my face up against a machine to look inside of it. There would be a random flash of light in various places and I would need to push a button every time I saw the light. I wondered why I didn't see as many lights on my left side as I did my right but then I didn't know if that was part of the test. When the assistant pulled the results she said I failed . . . miserably. After another couple of attempts at various test that I did horribly at she said I should really see the doctor and see what he wanted to do about the test.
When he came into the room he look one look at the test results, one look in my eyes and said "Yep, you've got keratoconus." Okay, but what is it?
Keratoconus is a progressive, degenerative eye disease of your cornea. Progressive because it changes over time. Degenerative because it gets worse. What happens is your cornea (the skin-like membrane holding your eye together) thins out over time. Because of the pressure of the fluids and all that stuff in your eye it puts pressure on that thinned out cornea and it bulges out in a cone shape. So instead of your eye being nice and round like a baseball, it's more cone shaped like the end of a football. If you want to know what that makes your vision look like have a look at the photo. Since the light coming into your eyes hits your lenses at all kinds of angles you get overlapping images in your vision.
The doctor said that Keratoconus is considered a medical condition and not a vision condition I would need to go to my medical doctor and get a referral to see a specialist. Thankfully everything would be covered under my medical coverage (which I did have) but getting to that point was a pain in the butt.
It took three months before I finally got everything approved and referred by my HMO and I got in to see a specialist. He confirmed the diagnosis and laid out what the treatment options were. That was when my life started to fall apart emotionally. But I'll cover that in another post.
About 10-11 years ago I was in desperate need of a new pair of glasses. I even considered giving contact lenses a try . . . as long as they didn't cost too much. I didn't have any vision coverage through work so everything was going to be paid "out of pocket". So where did I decide to go for a cheap eye exam and glasses? Walmart, of course.
The assistant had me take all kinds of tests with my eyes. For one of them I had to put my face up against a machine to look inside of it. There would be a random flash of light in various places and I would need to push a button every time I saw the light. I wondered why I didn't see as many lights on my left side as I did my right but then I didn't know if that was part of the test. When the assistant pulled the results she said I failed . . . miserably. After another couple of attempts at various test that I did horribly at she said I should really see the doctor and see what he wanted to do about the test.
When he came into the room he look one look at the test results, one look in my eyes and said "Yep, you've got keratoconus." Okay, but what is it?
Keratoconus is a progressive, degenerative eye disease of your cornea. Progressive because it changes over time. Degenerative because it gets worse. What happens is your cornea (the skin-like membrane holding your eye together) thins out over time. Because of the pressure of the fluids and all that stuff in your eye it puts pressure on that thinned out cornea and it bulges out in a cone shape. So instead of your eye being nice and round like a baseball, it's more cone shaped like the end of a football. If you want to know what that makes your vision look like have a look at the photo. Since the light coming into your eyes hits your lenses at all kinds of angles you get overlapping images in your vision.
The doctor said that Keratoconus is considered a medical condition and not a vision condition I would need to go to my medical doctor and get a referral to see a specialist. Thankfully everything would be covered under my medical coverage (which I did have) but getting to that point was a pain in the butt.
It took three months before I finally got everything approved and referred by my HMO and I got in to see a specialist. He confirmed the diagnosis and laid out what the treatment options were. That was when my life started to fall apart emotionally. But I'll cover that in another post.
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