Background

I have an eye disease - Keratoconus. I was diagnosed when I was about 25. I am now 37. For over 10 years I wore RPG (hard) contact lenses to correct my vision. I have had all the usually RPG problems - you don't have to catch the red eye flight to have red eyes if you wear RPG's! For the past few years a number of specialist optometrists have been unable to fit my eyes with RPG lenses that I have been able to tolerate for more than a day or two. My right eye has more advanced Keratoconus than my left - both create a challenge for the best optometrists!

About a year ago I had intacs surgery. This improved my vision somewhat during the day. However at night the intacts added a lot of glare due to the light reflecting off the plastic. This made it almost impossible to drive safely at night and made anything metallic or any source of light look very shiny! Personally I would not recommend intacs unless your Kerotoconus is very mild so that the result of the surgery lets you wear glasses or soft contact lenses and throw out your RPG's! From my experience specialist optometrists cannot fit an RPG to an eye with intacs as intacs leave the eye with a slightly uneven surface such that the intact hits the RPG which really stings! My current optometrist advised me to get the intacs removed!

I was not a candidate for collagen crosslinking as my corneas' were too thin to handle the laser without burning my retina! However, to me this procedure sounds mandatory for anyone who is recently diagmosed with Keratoconus or who has enough of their cornea left as it has been pretty much proven to halt the progression of Keratoconus and even reverse it in some cases.

Recently a company called Synergise has come up with some special lenses for Keratoconus patients. I tried the KC lenses in both of my eyes - without major success. I was able to wear them for about a week. There is now a Klearcone scleral lens available. It was released in the US around June 2009. If I can get it here in Australia I plan to try that in my left eye! This lens has won an engineering award in the US so it may do the trick!

I have just had a DALK corneal graft on my right eye about a week ago and my surgery experience and recovery will be the subject of this blog. I hope that this blog provides useful information to those who are Keratoconus patients and also for people who want gain a patient perspective into DALK corneal surgery.