Four Eyes No More

For most people who know my husband at all, it goes without saying that he was genetically gifted with a much less than perfect set of eyes. Not only does he have pretty bad vision, he was also discovered to be "color confused" at a fairly young age. He's not completely color blind, but it's pretty much a certainty that he doesn't see colors like everyone else.

In addition to these issues, after college and also a long drought from seeing an optometrist, a new doctor diagnosed him with yet another eye issue called Keratoconus. A normal cornea has a smooth concave shape but with this disease the cornea begins to develop a cone or for lack of a better term, the eye starts to develop a nipple type shape. With this diagnosis came a transition from soft lenses which were allowing the cone to become more pronounced to hard lenses which would hopefully smash down the cone & help with vision. Basically, when the cornea is cone shaped a soft contact lens cannot lay flat on the surface of the eye causing distortion--hard lenses are enough smaller that they will lay more flat & vision is greatly improved. For those of you who are wondering, the only surgery that will cure this particular disease is a corneal transplant & this hasn't been perfected enough for the doctor to consider this as an option...not to mention the fact that it's probably close to $10,000 per eye.

Hubby has definitely had his fair share of frustrations with the hard lenses including increased susceptibility to dust & light sensitivity. The light senstivity was becoming a major issue & Hubby scheduled an appointment with his doctor. The doctor was not concerned as light sensitivity or photophobia is common with those who have blue eyes & is increased with hard lenses that do not cover as much of the eye as soft lenses.

So...instead of one pair of contacts, Hubby is now sporting 2 pair--a soft contact with a hard contact on top in each eye. Yup, he's wearing 2 contacts in each eye. The doctor called this piggybacking & the hope is that the soft contact (with little to no prescription strength) will protect & shield the eye from light and the hard contact will continue to suppress the Keratoconus. Over the weekend Hubby was already able to tell a huge difference & is thrilled to have a solution to yet another eye issue.

Needless to say there have been plenty of vision jokes around our house in the past few days--
Six Eyes is now much more appropriate than four eyes. ;o)