EYE'LL BE BACK - BAD VISION / SUPER HEROES

On the 10th of December, 1994, I was diagnosed with having a rare eye condition called keratoconus. Now at the time I had a pretty good idea that this news wasn't going to be the most positive force in my life. Yet in the same breath, I didn't know how much it was going to effect me. I just thought, hey, all I'd need is a stronger pair of glasses, and that would be that. But no. I was wrong, very wrong. So much so in fact, that my life, as I knew it, was never going to be the same again!





You see, keratoconus is a disease of the eye that basically erodes the cornea by altering its shape. Normally people with regular vision have a cornea that's circular by design. But when you get something like this, the shape of the cornea becomes distorted, more concaved, thus making things harder to see.

One of the main ways of trying to rectify this condition is by wearing gas permeable contact lenses, also known as hard contact lenses, which essentially squashes your eye into the correct shape so you're able to see out of it properly -- like a jelly in a mold. The problem with this, however, is that sometimes your eye can fight back, doing so by literally flicking the lens out of your socket. Another problem with this solution is that you can also scratch your eye due to the pressure you're placing upon it.

And trust me, I should know, as I wore these poxy things for over three whole years, and in that time I messed up my eyes to such an extent that I needed to have corneal transplants. Two in fact: The first was in 1998 (my left eye) and the second was in 2001 (my right eye). Two corneal transplants over a period of three years, where I had to endure having to have stitches either taken out of my eye or put back into it, depending on what stage I was at, healing-wise. Plus to complement these proceedings there were also plenty of happy pills (yahoo), eye drops (which I still use), eye injections (which aren't very nice), as well as laser surgery performed on each eye (and I'm not talking about Superman's laser-vision, either). 

Now over on the opposite end of the spectrum, there were some drawbacks for me having this surgery. This included my eyes feeling sore and dry (Ouch!), being light sensitive (see previous comment), having low vision (ditto!), plus coming down with a bad dose of blepharitis (I think you're getting the general idea).

Although, you have to realize that most of this happened to me over fifteen years ago, so you can imagine how I felt at the end of last year when my doctor, Professor David O'Brart MD FRCS FRCOphths, said that I needed another transplant. Unfortunately the disease gradually returned to my left eye and I have no other choice but to have another operation. As a matter a fact, it's happening now, today, on the same day I plan on this going out (praise be thy blog scheduler).

Well, to be fair, I suppose this is just my way of telling you that my presence won't be felt for the next month or so. But don't worry, I'll get better, and I still plan on making sure there will be regular content coming out until my return. After all, one of the main things that has help me keep my spirits up, is knowing how many superheroes have also endured physical hardships. Here, check out the following infographic to see what I mean. Peace out, and see you again when I'm back from the beyond.

I'd like to thank www.rollamp.co.uk for allowing me to use their infographic.

If you're suffering from a similar ailment to me, and need a little bit of visual help from time to time, then you might like to know about a simple yet functional watch from Lifemax. The watch is presented in a 35mm silver case, with easy to read black dial, and high contrast white numerals and hands. It speaks the time and date in a clear voice (recorded by the Royal National Institute for Blind People), and also features a quartz movement with radio-controlled accuracy. This means the watch automatically receives the atomic time signal in the UK, Germany, USA and Japan, and can be manually adjusted in areas with no signal reception. Please check it out at the watchshop.com.