keratoconus

Say what? Keratocnus - known as KC - is an eye disease that my husband has been dealing with for about ten years.

KC is 'is a non-inflammatory eye condition in which the normally round dome-shaped cornea progressively thins causing a cone-like bulge to develop. This results in significant visual impairment. The cornea is the clear window of the eye and is responsible for refracting most of the light coming into the eye. Therefore, abnormalities of the cornea severely affect the way we see the world making simple tasks, like driving, watching TV or reading a book difficult. One of the best descriptions keratoconus vision is that it is similar to looking through a car winshield on a rainy day.' - from the website KCVision.

Hubby is not the most communicative man on the planet. As the years with the disease progressed and only one real conversation regarding the situation, his fears about it and what we might need to do I realized I needed to educate myself. I signed up for the National Keratoconus Foundation's newsletter and researched the disease and I observed my husband. I got pretty good at telling how his eye was by how he moved and performed simple tasks and how obsessive/compulsive he got about certain routines and changes.

You cannot imagine how happy I was when he said he had decided to get a corneal transplant. For awhile we were significantly stressed because his parent's were going to pay for the surgery. Our relationship with them is poor but we needed to fix his eyes. I brought the situation to our prayer group mid-summer and within a few weeks hubby's company changed insurance and the new insurance company said they would cover it!! So often in my life God's response to prayer is long term and I need time and twenty-twenty hindsight to see it but this time it was immediate - what a joyous feeling!! I was amazed at how relatively relaxed hubby was approaching the surgery.

The surgery went well and his vision improvement is going exactly as it should. Hubby's mood regarding his site has improved. I am glad we performed the surgery on his right eye when we did because it now seems that the disease progression in his left-eye is going more quickly. We are fairly sure that he will need surgery in that eye sometime in the future. We pray that the progression of the disease in that eye is slow enough to allow complete healing in the right eye. It will be at least eighteen months from the surgery before they will even fit that eye for a contact.

I am not sure why I am sharing all this but I thought perhaps it would be of benefit to someone. Do you live with someone who has KC? Feel free to contact me. It effects the whole family.

Are you curious about how it effects vision? Here is a site that shows how a person suffering from KC may have his vision copromised: http://www.kcvision.org/