My Vision
I’m afflicted with a rare, progressive eye disease, called Keratoconus 1. While it doesn’t cause blindness, it finally results in very bad vision.
Whenever my eye condition comes up during conversation2, I have a hard time explaining exactly how my vision is affected. However, I recently came across a wonderful site3 which contains a compilation of images, some of which I’ve used here, designed to help communicate how and what individuals with Keratoconus see.
Currently, I’m experiencing the early stages of the disease only in the right eye, so my overall vision isn’t too bad. Although, one major problem is that images appear very blurred at night4. For example, this is how the moon looks through my right eye.
Driving at night is especially a problem, because of the glare and streaking of light from the oncoming traffic.
Also, distant objects are never clear or sharp. This results in me ending up with a big headache if I don’t wear my glasses or contacts for an extended period of time.
Footnotes [1] – Believe me, you DO NOT want to wiki this.
[2] – ie, rarely. Usually, I have much more interesting things to talk about. And no, it’s not the weather either. Honest!
[4] – They appear slightly blurred during the day too, if you’re interested, which doubtless, you’re not.
All original work on this blog is licensed under a 
Uh, I wikied it anyway,
should have listened to you.
Do the glasses help much? Is there any reason why it is blurred more at night than during the day?
Mohan K.V
April 12, 2007 at 1:08 pm
So did I,
.
Vettius Carnaticae
April 12, 2007 at 2:43 pm
The glasses do help a lot. Vision with contacts is almost perfect, although they are very irritating to wear.
I don’t know why it’s blurred at night, but I have a hypothesis. During day time, I think that my brain is able to “filter” images, using the light around the object as feedback. However,at night, when I look at an object like the moon, there’s no light around it allow for correction, so it appears blurred with multiple images.
parseval
April 12, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Can’t they just burn the conical part away with a laser or something, and make it the usual corneal shape?
Aditya
July 4, 2007 at 10:08 pm
No, unfortunately
The problem is that the cornea isn’t the right shape, so shining a laser may scatter and cause more damage.
The good news is that some scientists have found that if you drop riboflavin over the cornea and then shine UV light, it actually stops the progression for good in 99% of the cases, with no side effects! What happens is that the riboflavin links with the collagen and strengthens it to prevent it from bulging. It’s called the collagen cross link treatement. I’ve spoken to my doc, and he says we’ll try it once it’s been thoroughly tested.
parseval
July 4, 2007 at 10:58 pm