Life from my Wheelchair

No, this is not a software update as so many of us have been doing on our iPhones & iPads, but continuing the tale of my vision following my partial corneal transplant. Sadly, and somewhat infuriatingly, I’m still not able to wear my new lens for longer than about 4 hours. This greatly restricts what I can do in a day, I have to decide if I wear my lens for dealing with the pile of snail mail that comes through my letter box or have the luxury of being able to see some television of an evening. On a day when I have a hospital appointment, my wearing time is used to give me in the independence to drive myself.

My experiences of using hospital transport which can take 8 hours to get me to and fro a half hour appointment, causing me to miss meals and care visits, and on one occasion damage to my wheelchair, has meant that if I can drive myself I will. On my visit back to Ken Pullum at Moorfields Eye Hospital when I explained about the discomfort I was having Ken re-examined my eye and felt the discomfort was caused because the lens was not fitting snugly enough (due to the steepness of my eye profile caused by keratoconus) and I was loosing much of the fluid which I have to fill the lens with before insertion. Ken therefore decided that I needed to be fitted with a custom made lens. This is made by opening my eyelids very wide and putting an eye shaped cup attached to a hollow tube in my eye and injecting a blue goo-like substance into the tube until it fills the cup and makes an impression of the surface of my eye. It didn’t hurt, but was just rather uncomfortable for a time. However the equipment did remind me of the kit I’ve used to fill holes in walls before painting!

I returned to Moorfields last week for a fitting. The new lens is quite a different shape from my ‘off the shelf’ lens and looked somewhat bigger. I was worried about how I would tolerate it, but managed keep the new lens in for about two hours with very little discomfort. Ken was happy with the fit so the next stage was refraction. This is needed to ensure I would have good enough vision to be able to drive. I have decided that I want to be able to use it for distance ie driving and watching TV. At the moment I’m having to wear glasses on top of my lenses to be able to drive. As I spend quite a bit of my time using my iPad when watching/listening to TV I’m finding that having to peer over my glasses to see TV properly doesn’t really work and that I’d rather have half moon reading glasses. Also because my eyes are very sensitive to sunlight on sunny days when I’m driving or outdoors I have to wear over-glasses to reduce the glare. These are rather cumbersome and don’t fit easily over my distance glasses. It will be rather good to be able to wear fashion sunglasses after so many years!

So I now have wait several weeks to get my lens back, then hopefully more freedom.