Keratoconus & Me

I was diagnosed with Keratoconus - I still struggle with its spelling - when I was not even 10. I had been prescribed reading glasses when I was around eight-years-old. But soon afterwards it was decided that my Keratoconus was at a stage that the only way to treat it was to fit rigid contacts lenses. I would have been about 11-years-old when they were first fitted. They were tiny little things with a greyish tinge. The cruel irony of correcting poor sight with these weeny little things struck me straight away. Over the years, I have been on hands and knees in bathrooms, restaurants, ovals, museums and in cars trying to locate the little buggers when they have gone missing. Friends and family have lived to tell the tales. It hasn't been pretty when I have been separated from my lenses.
Those early days were fraught when you are not used to putting things in your eyes. Lots of near misses and lots of discomfort. It is amazing that these days they fit rigid contacts in the eyes of toddlers.
So what is Keratoconus? I often joke that not only is my middle-aged body bulging but so are my eyeballs!
There is a lot of information out there but I quite liked the website I came across the other day www.whatiskeratoconus.com. It explains the disease simply. It is clear, like a window that light has to pass through to enter your eye.
"Behind the cornea is the lens that focuses the light onto the retina at back of the eye. The retina converts the light into nerve signals that your brain can understand. In a normal eye, the cornea is smoothly rounded. The light passes through evenly onto the lens," the website explains.
But in dodgy corneas like mine this doesn't happen.

Instead, my cornea has thinned and bulges. Yep, another spot to battle that bulge.
Back to the website: "The light coming through is distorted the lens cannot focus it properly and vision is affected. The name actually means coning of the cornea, although the actual distortion of the cornea is not as regular as a cone."
The irregularity of the cornea means the vision is very hard to correct.
Hence the fitting of rigid or hard contact lenses.
Over the years, as people have learned that I wore hard contact lenses, I have been advised I should try laser surgery "because that really worked for my grandmother" or the assumption is that I am too vain to wear spectacles.
On the contrary, would love to be able to slip on a pair of specs. I know peope complain that they fog up but it would be a great convenience when you are at the beach or hoping out of bed to put on some glasses. Sadly, I have been unable to get any correction with glasses. Not even Coke bottle glasses.
copyright: Claire Heaney 2012.