Cornea from Hell

Where do I start. The beginning was so long ago and the ending is not in sight.

On Sept 19th, a busy Friday, our Mr B was hit like a bolt of lightning in his left eye. Pain, Pain Pain. The local emergency room cannot take an eye patient on a weekend, so unless you drive directly to Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital and the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, you are out of luck until Monday. Yep, our Doctors spend weekends up in the Palm Beaches and are no where to be found on weekends.

Back to the story. He "pained" it out for the weekend since the owner was going out of town the following Wednesday for 10 days or so, and it was a busy weekend, and she would be gone yet again the following day on a motorcycle excursion with the boyfriend and not available until Sunday afternoon, after her oldest son's Memorial at the Restaurant. Her oldest son was a police officer died tragically — very sad for this woman. She has been through the ringer so to speak. Anyway, of course he worked, as he always does, which might not have been the correct thing to do with an eye injury! He is driven and never has a sick day, until now.

Come Tuesday when the Doc could finally see him, he was prescribed med's for a bacterial infection, which is the normal course of action I guess. The pain got so severe Mr B thought he was dying. After day after day of driving to KW to the Doc's to let him see if there was any improvement, and none appeared, it became worse. A trip to Miami was in order.

We are lucky that Bascom Palmer, the best Eye Center in the country, is in Miami, so off we went. I wish I had bitch pills for him because he was miserable!!! They cultured, scanned, scraped, probed, and sent him home with new med's made in their lab, and new instructions for his Doc. Two days later… Nope, not working, and Mr B in such severe pain his brain was exploding. Oh, did I mention that he had to put these Rx drops in his eye every single hour of every single day??? Yup Yup.... we just don't sleep. Period!!! He'd scream when I'd put the Rx in, HELLO... it's not working!!!!

Okay, his Doc said, I'll call Bascom Palmer to see if the cultures are in. Well, it was a fungus, not a bacteria, and they advised to send him directly to them because it was more serious and his regular Doc didn't have the instruments that were needed. Since none of us had had sleep, driving to Miami right then and there was not an option… no one could keep their good eyes open long enough! We opted to leave at 3am that morning to arrive when the Doc's at B & P did at 7am. Polly was the driver since I had to continue to work — bullshit assness but I had to. Gosh Love her, she is awesome. B&P have had us ever since, every three days. We are all EYE Pals now.

Bottom line. I know you want it. It takes approx. 2 months to clear this fungus from the center of his cornea and it was completely set in by the time they figured out what it was. It is slow growing, but without the proper course of action can delve deep into the cornea so drastic action was taken. So with that said, last week it finally started to show some improvement, which continues for the next three days. Drops went from hourly to every two, to every three, and today they said every four. These drops can do damage themselves, but he needs them and the only reason they are backing them down is because they do harm when used for this length of time. For those of you Clinically inclined, they are Rx made at the hospital and must be kept refrigerated and only stay fresh for a week. Named: Amphotericin — not the type B, but plain straight Amphotericin which I cannot find any info on, and they gave no paper with it stating side effects and such. Still, it's much better than the killer Natacyn 15ml that he had at 238.00 for a tiny tiny thimble dropper. He hated that anyway, it was like glue!!

He is also on antibiotics eye drops four times a day — Polymyxin B/TMP 10 ml which they also make up there at the hospital, but I think we'd be able to get it anywhere.

Now for you contact lens wearers… B&L contact lens products had problems with just this same fungus awhile back, but Mr B uses ReNu products. Ill have to find out what he had in the Kitchen at the restaurant to use as his refresh drops, for cleansing his eyes from smoke etc. as he worked.The smoke alarm was actually taken off the ceiling due to smoke alarm sounding off many times and disrupting customers. It's an open air kitchen with fans blowing this way and that, so anything could have gotten into his eye, and I do mean anything. This Mold can come from anything, we have come to find out, not just yeast mold from bread which was what he initially thought, but from anything! With all the hurricane winds blowing our way this summer and the steady breezes, who knows!!! I do know this — protective goggles would not have prevented it, but would have only incubated it and made it even worse. He wears his bi-focals at work, but also switches out to lenses due to sweat, etc. He had a new pair in at the time, but when you're dealing with fungus, it attaches and doesn't let up, I guess. I feel for anyone in the same position. Many countries with hurricane aftermath are experiencing this same problem with patients. And it's also a problem with contact lens extended overnight users that use B&L product for moisture add. Anyway.

After we clear up this fungus, and possibly as soon as next week (!!!!), a cornea specialist will evaluate him next week in Miami to see if it was indeed a tiny cut or just something that got under his contact and had it's way dead center of his eye. The scarring on his cornea is extensive, but we'll see what the specialist says. Mr B can see light and about nothing else right now. He has only 10% vision in his left eye, cannot make out anything other than to say "that's a blob", and nothing else — milk bottle effect.

If we get the all-clear on the fungus, they'll start a Steroid drop to try to heal the scarring. They feel after a month or two of steroid drops they will know the full extent of the damage to the cornea. Most likely, they say, a cornea transplant would be done, but they will not commit to anything right now.

So we drive every three days to Miami, leaving at 3am and back at 4pm. It's a long day. Thank goodness for our good-hearted daughter Miss P, she is a dream!!!!! She can drive in a hurricane safely, she has Thursday off and will finish work Wed night at 11:30pm, go home sleep for a couple hours, then get up at 2am to drive here to drive us to Miami, and then have the night off of work. Mr. L has been fine with it all, he sleeps at a friend's house the night we leave so he can get to school. It's all working out.

Okay then, heard enough??? Questions? Just ask — I have more exacting information if you want it. Mr. B's pain has lessened, thank goodness… tonight we'll sleep!!! WOW — We have four hours!!! We may never wake up!!!

It's all so serious and interesting and eye threatening… scary stuff, but Cornea implants are the norm these days, so I'm sure it will be all good and the outcome will be what we are hoping for.