Not wanting to botch this appointment, I arose at 3 AM and made it through Atlanta before it became the traffic mess it is best known for.
I was waiting for them to unlock the door.
A quiet empty waiting room.
Just what my nerves requested. I hadn't found the parking associated to this building and had spent some time circling the hospital campus until settling in under the Children's Hospital and crossing three buildings and a long pedestrian bridge to find the Eye Clinic.
Exiting from my appointment later, I realized how lucky I had been to land the first appointment of the day. A line out the door had formed and when returning to my car, two other cars where sparring for my spot.
Eyes dilated and preoccupied with what I'd been told, I found it hard to drive home. Plus, my GPS app informed me of two accidents to avoid, one delaying traffic over an hour on I-85, forcing me to take two lane roads for an hour to circumnavigate it. My navigation app has gotten me out of so many jams!
Back to the diagnosis...
I'm still digesting the news, I'm grateful, angry, numb, partially homicidal...
The renowned corneal specialist basically disagreed with everything my former surgeon and opthalmologist had diagnosed and their proposed treatments. Wow, just wow!
Over the years, I'd had two RK surgeries, corneal ablations and the surgery to the right eye last year. For the past 15 years I'd put my trust in a clinic in Montgomery. It's become apparent now that the trust was misplaced.
At my last appointment at that clinic, I was told that I had retina damage, scar tissue on the new lens and advanced keratoconus which had to be addressed immediately before it got to the point my blurred, double vision became irreparable. I was slated for retinal surgery followed by corneal cross linking procedure... more super expensive medical bills to absorb. I'd already filed out the application for a medical loan and I was bracing myself when I arrived at Emory for their estimate of the surgeries, should I elect to have them in Atlanta instead of Montgomery.
The Emory specialist said he was dismayed at how many patients were unnecessarily recommended for corneal cross linking. It's a newly approved procedure in the US and all the rage with opthalmologists who think of it as a cure-all. Without coming straight out and saying I'd been mislead and misdiagnosed, he stated that he would've preferred using a different replacement lens in my eye due to my weak zonules. The less preferred lens isn't anchored well and it's no wonder scar tissue has formed to anchor it. There is NO retina damage, but scar tissue has formed all in the eye, but he doesn't recommend removing it right away because then the lens would be free to wobble again and then I'd be back at square 1. If it weren't for my corneas being unstable, he'd recommend replacing the lens, but that's further down the road, if my eyes can be stabilized.
Technically, the Montgomery clinic was correct in stating that I was losing vision faster in my right eye, but mostly because of the wrong lens they put in that caused damages!!! My good shoulder angel reassures me that no doctor does it on purpose to harm a patient and that this is the result of just a bad decision on their part. My curmudgeon angel says they #@!*ed up and were trying to hide the evidence by throwing more surgeries my way.
The keratoconus diagnosis was also thrown out the window. My corneas are compromised by scarring and past ulcers. I don't think I process pain the way most people do. He said I would've definitely felt the ulcers, but I couldn't remember anything except mild annoyance with my eyes. Not anything like what the horses exhibit when they get ulcers.
Bottom line is my vision sucks because I'm looking through the opacity of scar tissue and that knobbliness of scarring causes inflammation which has scarred the entire eye causing my tear ducts not to function well, further spinning the vicious cycle and further scarring my corneas. Then, my weak zonules that hold my lenses (most likely due to years of blows to the head) are supposed to be the barriers that help separate the vitreous from the front chamber of the eye and the back chamber, it appears the leakage is causing flares in my eyes too. Another reason tampering with them would only have made matters worse.
The course of action taken is to follow a course of 6 drops per day in both eyes for 3 months, then to see a zonule specialist at Emory late December before returning to the corneal specialist.
You recall all the expensive contacts and custom contacts the Montgomery clinic fitted me with??? Apparently the worst thing they could've done is to slap contacts atop compromised corneas, it's what promoted so much more ulceration and scarring. Thanks, thanks a frigging lot.
I'll never be able to wear contacts again, but I should be stabilized enough by January to have prescription glasses.
I was told that I shouldn't be driving, oh you don't say!!! I reassured him that I hadn't been driving much at all. 99% of errands have been run by others...
Except for a few runs to the vet school hauling a 20,000 lb rig...
Besides, I showed them this picture and lamented how long it would take me to get to Atlanta hoofing it.
