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keratoconusgroup · 8 years ago

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Here's what my cornea transplant was like

I wrote this up 11 years ago when I got my first cornea transplant. I'm 42 now. Since then I've had the other eye done too, like four years ago. Recovery was a little longer on that one, not sure why; I was out of work for two weeks. Both corneas are doing super awesome and I see at almost 20/20 with soft lenses now - a normal disposable lens in the left eye and a Kerasoft lens in the right. Life is pretty normal and I rarely remember that I have keratoconus. Both operations were done by different surgeons in Boston, whose names I can get you if you want 'em. There are cuss words in this, if that's a thing you care about. April 2006 Here's what I learned about people who give cornea transplants: either they have crappy senses of humor, or they've heard just about all the cornea jokes they can handle. Here's a brief list of things none of my doctors have found funny: The obvious one, "Can I get some lasers put in there?" "Can I get some X-Ray vision put in there?" If you give me a serial killer's cornea, will I be forced to kill and kill again?" Not like these are the awesomest jokes ever, but here's the thing: Most cornea transplant patients are like 80 years old. I honestly figured they might not have thought of 'em. Apparently 80-year-olds want laser vision just as much as we do. Which, really, who wouldn't? It's not like old dudes have never heard of laser vision. Here's what everyone was entertained by: I am apparently the first person to ask if I could keep my cornea. They were flabbergasted by that one. They did let me keep it, though, and they gave it to me in the same vial that my new cornea came in, so I now know that my donor was a 50-year-old dude who died on April 17. Thanks, dude! Were you a serial killer? The old cornea looks like a little, dirty contact lens. With dots around the edges, because they dyed it so they'd know where to chop. Here's what they used to chop my cornea out: something like a tiny toilet plunger with sharp points around the edge. I was gonna make a crack about how they just stick it in, twist and yank, but then I image-Googled it and holy mother of God, that's exactly what they did. That was a lot easier to deal with when I thought I was kidding. I was awake during the twist-and-pull part - all the parts, actually - which you would think would be pretty not-so-great, and I definitely thought would suck but man, they got some crazy drugs these days. Here's how crazy the drug they had me on was: I was completely lucid - able to talk to the doctor, ask him what he was doing, and make fun of him about the fact that he was operating to Willy Nelson - and at the same time, I was completely unfazed by the fact that he was clearly fucking with my eyeball with knives. At one point the usual blur I see out of my eye was replaced by nothing but a bright light, and I distinctly remember saying, "Oh shit, did you just take my cornea out?" "Yep." "Neeeaaat..." I kept my right eye shut so that I could see what was going on with my left one better. The point is, that's not a drug you want to be on in an uncontrolled situation. That drug was scary. Y'know that scene in Hannibal - the crappy book, not the crappy movie - where Lecter gets the dude to slice his own face off and feed it to his dogs? When I read that scene I remember thinking, "That's totally unrealistic, man!" But I bet he was on some drugs just like this. Things about the operation that disappointed me: No laser vision The patch I walked out with was distinctly un-pirate. I was expecting a pirate patch. That patch looked a lot more like the kind of patch you wear when someone's been fucking with your eyeballs with knives. Things I learned following the operation: Next time I'm not gonna ask the nurses their opinions about whether I should self-medicate with weed. That really freaked them out. Next time I'm just gonna shut up and go ahead and do it. Because seriously, man: That shit thins out oxygen bubbles in your blood and all, thus quite possibly relieving pressure in your eye, which is the main point of concern during the first hours after surgery. It's certainly not gonna hurt. Okay yes, it also enlarges the blood vessels in your eye specifically, but that actually shouldn't be a problem. Since when is more blood (but thinner) around the area of an injury a bad thing? That's why scalp wounds heal faster. I probably should have smoked some weed that first night, because Mother of God that night sucked. We're not gonna talk about that night. Next day was pretty weak too, in large part because I was tired - neither [my first wife] nor I got a lot of sleep that first night. But the patch came off, the pain went down and by 3:00 I was getting sick of being an invalid. That night [a friend] came over and we watched the game and had some beers, and the next morning I was back at work. Right now I'm wearing a shield - basically a no-prescription contact - in the left eye, and I'm dumping mad eyedrops in there like four times a day, and I gotta wear sunglasses whenever I'm anywhere near outside. The eye is not psyched about the brightness. But I'm pretty much fine. The exciting news is that the vision in my left eye is already way, way better than it was before the operation. It may even be better than my right eye. And I shouldn't see the full benefits of the surgery for 3 to 6 months, so this is pretty exciting stuff. Apparently the cornea is all scratched up right now, as all corneas are when they're first transplanted. (Don't ask me, man.) If the transplant holds, the scratches will heal and my vision will get even better. Cornea transplants have between a 5 and 30% chance of being rejected, and you would think that scientists could come up with a more exact number than that. If it's between 5 and 30%, then it's about 18%, right? Jeez. Also, no one will tell me exactly what things might conspire to tilt my odds towards the 5% end of the scale. I would love to have that information. But whatever, still: an 80% chance of success would be enough for me to go all in in a poker hand and gloat while I did it. I'm pretty comfortable with those odds. Physically, I have a fairly tame black eye. My left eyelid gets droopy sometimes - they must've hurt the muscles while they were propping it open Clockwork Orange style. And it's slightly bloodshot. I look like I got in a fight, but not a very big one. But that's about it for the after-effects, man. Well, that and last time I saw you I could see into your soul, and it was black. Black and corrupt like the tar pits of Hades. But me and my new eye know just what to do about that. submitted by /u/AlexInBrooklyn [link] [comments] https://www.reddit.com/r/Keratoconus/comments/5xd1tl/heres_what_my_cornea_transplant_was_like/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

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