Hi all,
Sorry for not updating this blog as much as I should be, but to be honest with you all, not a lot has gone on. I have spent most of my time since the post forgetting that I even had eye problems. It’d only be until people brought it up and asked that I remembered again.
One thing that I did do was an interview for the NHS Blood and Transplant Department. I’ll be doing another post about that once all the material is approved and, hopefully, sent out into the world.
Let’s start with the first appointment.
March 8th ‘17:
It’s the same old, normal routine, various eye tests and scans. HOWEVER, the one unique thing in this appointment was that I’d have all remaining stitches taken out on the day.
I won’t bore you all with the minor details and such, but let’s just say that it all took but 45 minutes to cut and pull out around 8-10 stitches that we still in my cornea. Painless but tense, but nevertheless went through it without a hitch. Well… Apart from one part where I accidentally flinched and it looked like I lunged right into my consultant’s forceps. But nothing bad came out of it. After that was all out of the way, I was told to expect the process of trying to improve the vision even better as it was still not good.
I was then sent home and I rested for the remainder of the day.
Onto the next appointment which was this week…
May 17th ‘17:
Again, the standard routine of the eye tests and scans. I see my consultant, which was a bit of a surprise as I had been expected to see my contact lens expert, but nevertheless, I and the Mother walked into his office.
Instead of immediately looking through my eye with his slit lamp, he asks if he could try a little experiment. I obviously agree and he goes and fetches this large wooden briefcase, which when opened, showed off a huge amount of lens inside it. He starts combining some of them and then proceeds to ask me the standard questions whenever you do an eye chart test.
What was weird was they weren’t standard lenses as per say, but whenever he twisted the lens cap, it would sway side to side, obviously trying to amuse my eye. But, like me, my eye was very stubborn and didn’t want to do anything with this test.
Thus then, I find out I had astigmatism. It’s a fairly common thing among us humans, and I’m sure something that is very common when you undergo a cornea transplant.
He then proceeded to check my eye like the normal way he does, but much to his dismay, he saw minor graft rejection in progress. ANOTHER ONE?! WHEN WILL I GET A BREAK? Well, the question to that answer is never. I did sign up to this, so I can’t really complain.
But I do however feel a bit foolish as I did have some stabbing pain and a sore eye for a couple days, and I hadn’t realised that was warning shots to me that something wasn’t right. But we all live and learn. So I was told then that if even it’s a small thing, to ring them and explain the symptoms and go into them as I was a high-risk case. So, again, lesson learnt.
So because of not me going into the hospital when I should’ve, I am back onto steroid eyedrops and following a strict regime. The drops I am taking are called Dexamethasone Sodium Phosphate. They’re a lot gentler than the ones I’m used to having, but they do however have the inconvenient feeling of stinging when I have them (speaking of which, I just had to take a drop a few minutes ago as of writing this).
I was on an hourly drop, but that has been downgraded to one drop every two hours. And then when every new week passes, the frequent amounts of drops needed are less and less.
As I do have astigmatism in my left eye, it does mean that they’re looking into having what I believe is LASIK laser eye surgery to fix the problem. Yay, more surgery. But no, seriously, I do forward to seeing (pardon the pun) how this surgery could help improve with my current redundant eyesight. Now if LASIK surgery is on the NHS or I have to go private, I don’t know, but I’m sure that will be discussed when I go back there next month.
I do have to say that my Eye Clinic team are an amazing bunch of people that do so much for so many people. I can only hope one day to repay back their hard work.
That’s all the updates I have really.
I hope you all have a brilliant, rainy (where I am), week.
Ollie