I had hinted at this in a previous post. Today I had surgery on my eye.

First some background. I was diagnosed in high school as having an eye disease called kerateconus.  Kerateconus affects the cornea (the clear part of the eye in front of the colored iris and pupil.)  The rest of the eye is fairly healthy.  The disease causes the cornea to become more and more conical instead of the nice smooth hemisphere of a healthy cornea.  The process is a continuous gradual process.  It is interesting that people with the disease also rub their eyes a lot.  This is certainly the case for me.

When I was diagnosed, I read some literature about the disease and it appeared that the disease often, although not always, continues to deform the cornea until it is so acute that the peak thins and eventually develops opaque scar tissue.  At that point the one solution is to have a corneal transplant,

Well, today was my day for a transplant.   My left eye has reached the point of having scar tissue and my optometrist Dr. Chong referred me to Dr. Goodman who said my eye was an "excellent candidate" for a transplant.  That was in May and the scheduled day has arrived.   So I will try to write pretty regularly about my experience.  If nothing else for my own ability to remember the little details later.  If it helps other know what to expect when they go through the same procedure, great! The entire process will last more than a year probably.

Today my wife and my dad brought me to the hospital for  10:10am surgery.  We arrive early sometime before 8am.  My wife noticed on the board that my doctor, Dr. Daniel Goodman, had quite a number of operations scheduled that day.

When you read about the transplant on some web sites you will see that some doctors prefer to do the operation under a local anesthesia and others under a general anesthesia.  I have to say happy to hear at an earlier appointment that mine would be under general.  I'm sure local is fine but I was happy that I would be taking a nap unaware of what was happening around me.  Because it was a GA procedure I was told to fast after midnight.

Fortunately really the day was pretty uneventful.  My nurse was a pro and got the IV in on the first try with no drama on my part, hooray!  After that everything went like clockwork.  I met with the anesthesiologist and Dr. Goodman.  They said the procedure would take roughly 45 minutes to an hour.  That seemed to hold and after being rolled into the operating room I said good night and work up in the recovery room.  I never actually opened my eyes in the recovery room.  Before I knew I was a awake I found that taking deep breathes was impossible (I have asthma) and apparently said "inhaler" with my first waking breathe.  The recovery room was a blur.  In and out ... taking some puffs on my inhaler ... being able to take deep breathes ... sleeping some more.  Eventually I was taken back to the room we started in.  I don't remember the elevator.  I heard we were leaving and then we arrived.

Anyway, by 11:20am I was back in the room in the outpatient ward.  I eventually woke up more and had juice, water, crackers, decaf coffee and some lemon cake thanks to Amy and Calvin (friends from church).  Anyway I was given a Tylenol with codine, because there was a very little irritation from my left eye.

At 1:30pm I was discharged with instructions to take Extra Strength Tylenol for any further irritation.  That has been kept up.

On getting home I had lunch and went to bed for a three hour nap.  I woke up and layed around.

By now, about 9pm.  I feel very good.  Good enough to write this book.  I will hit the sack soon for the night.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with Dr. Goodman when he will take the surgical dressing off and look at the eye, and start my regimen of eye drops.

Well future posts will be shorter.  I promise!

Arrrg!