My Husband's Eye Surgery- Keratoconus Pt. 1

 I'm hoping our story will be helpful to Keratoconus patients who are considering the INTACS surgery so I'm going into more detail than I normally would, if this doesn't apply to you or isn't interesting to you, you might want to skip this post.
6 years ago my husband and I made a special trip from our home in North Austin to an eye doctor in San Antonio to see if he was a candidate for a new procedure called INTACS that would hopefully fix an eye condition he has called Keratoconus (KC). Long story short, they said he wasn't a candidate because of the thinning of his cornea. We left feeling disappointed but at least we had tried and now had an answer.
Before I get into the whole story you might want to know what this big "K" word means!
Keratoconus is a degenerative disorder of the eye in which structural changes within the cornea cause it to thin and change to a more conical shape than its normal gradual curve.

He was diagnosed with this condition at the age of 20 and was fitted with Rigid Gas Permeable (RGP) contact lenses which were the only solution due to the fact that the hard lens reshapes the cornea of the eye and corrected his vision.
In 2008 Todd's eye doctor at the time told him about a hybrid contact lens that was supposed to be more comfortable for KC patients. Synergeyes  were supposed to give the comfort of a soft lens with the correction of a RGP lens. This was not the case for Todd. They were very painful to get on and off and once he got them on he experienced double vision and constant discomfort. He went back to the doctor several times trying to get the proper fit but finally gave up on them and returned to his RGP lenses.
After the experience with the hybrid lenses Todd felt somewhat frustrated and hadn't gone back to that eye doctor for several years but in the past year he had noticed a decline in his vision and knew it was time to find a new doctor.
In July he returned to an eye doctor he had been to previously and during that exam she noticed some blood in Todd's eye (that's another post) that she wanted to have looked at by a surgeon in the office. During the appointment with the surgeon they discussed the blood but also Todd's KC. This surgeon asked Todd if he was familiar with a procedure called INTACS because he thought he would be a candidate for it! Of course Todd told him he had known of INTACS for years but had been told his cornea was too thin for this procedure. Apparently in the past 6 years the measuring of the eye has improved to where this surgeon felt these rings could be placed safely in the eye. 
Todd was very encouraged and we began the process to get the surgery approved by our insurance.
Originally our insurance turned Todd down because they said that he had not tried other options available to KC patients such as the hybrid lenses so we had to have his medical records from the previous eye doctor sent to the surgeons office and then they had to send it to our insurance which caused us to have to wait another month to have the procedure done.
Monday, September 17th, 2012 Todd had INTACS placed in his left eye. He has a follow-up visit 10 days after the surgery and I will give an update after that appointment.