Friday, December 28, 2007

Martin's Eye Troubles

A few days ago, I mentioned that Martin was having severe pain in his eye and was having trouble opening it. It all started this past Sunday when Martin woke up and couldn't open his eye. Because of the holiday, we weren't able to get him in to see an eye doctor until Wednesday. He wasn't able to see his regular eye doctor, and the eye doctor who was filling in completely freaked us out. She told us that she feared he had ruptured the inner part of his cornea and that he needed to see a cornea specialist right away. She mentioned the possibility of needing an emergency cornea transplant, which scared us both. Wednesday night was rough for us, and neither of us slept well. I was so worried.

First thing Thursday morning, we went to see the cornea specialist. She confirmed the prognosis that Martin ruptured the inner part of his cornea, called Descemet's membrane. This rupture was a direct result of the progression of a disease Martin was diagnosed with last year called keratoconus. If you want to know more, look it up in Wikipedia. There's a good description there.

So the specialist explained that the rupture caused fluid from the back of his eye to leak into the front part of the eye. We could see the cloudy appearance of the eye, which was caused by this fluid. When she tested his vision, he couldn't see even the top row of the vision chart with that eye. His periphery vision is good, though, and his vision in his other eye is excellent. I've been driving everywhere this week, and it's fair to say that I'll be the family chauffeur for awhile.

The specialist wants to see Martin again in two weeks to see how the eye heals. We talked briefly about the possibility of a cornea transplant, but she told us that we will first wait to see how the eye heals and if there's any improvement in the vision after the scarring is complete. This is scary stuff...

Stay tuned, and please keep us in your prayers.

No comments: