Hi there.
My name is Ollie Storey. I am 19 years old and suffer from a disorder called Keratcconus. It’s when the cornea in the eye thins and loses strength, turning it from a dome shape to a cone shape. This ruins clear vision and halos start appearing.
The reason why this disorder has hit me quite hard is because at the time my Keratoconus started to progress, I was studying Music Tech at a local college as I want to become a musical producer/engineer. And, of course, requires having the person stare at computer screens all day everyday. Which is a big no no for my eyes.
I started noticing problems in my left eye late 2012 after getting into a physical fight with someone who shall remain nameless. After that incident, I was experiencing extremely painful headaches, to the point that I’d have random black outs and wake up hours later not realising what had happened. Then I noticed my vision was getting worse. A whole lot worse. If you’ve known me all my life I had perfect vision. People used to call me an eagle because of how far I could out in the distance without any problems. Sadly, thats not the case anymore.
I left this problem for two years without any medical co-operation (which I do now regret). But this was also down to the fact that I suffered from severe depression and social anxiety. So going out was a massive challenge. But one day in 2014, I had the coverage to go to Supersavers and tell them what had happened. It took a whole hour to realise what the problem was. I had Keratoconus and my left eye had it really badly. I wasn’t surprised that I was told that even glasses or normal contact lenses would fix the problem. As many people said to me that from the sounds of it I just needed glasses. But how wrong were they.
But now fast forward a year, I’ve just had cross linking for my right eye, as that was starting to progress as well. But hopefully it has been stopped. Still have a long way to go.
Couple days ago I went to see my Doctor at the L&D Hospital in the UK about my right eye’s post op check. And everything seems to be in order. Then we started talking about my left eye, and my consultant said that my left eye is so bad, that its now considered that its basically blind, only displaying light. Which is very annoying as well. And have been put on the list of a corneal transplant. As contact lenses have tried and failed, only giving me up to 60% vision. So I’m biting the bullet and going for a transplant.
I hope you follow this blog to follow my journey to battle this eye disorder. And if you’re a sufferer like me, and want to ask me anything, don’t hesitate to send me a question or message about treatments I’ve had and my experience with Keratoconus.
Enjoy your day,
Ollie x
P.S. excuse the poor grammar is theres any.