So here is an update from my side. I am almost at 1 year post op with my toric ICL in my left eye, it has been absolutely brilliant so far, and I just hope it will stay the same.
However I have had another eye hicup when I went to one of my routine eye appointments as the doctor noticed that it looked like I had a subclinical small retinal detachment and minor tears in the retinas of both eyes. After a lot of freaking out and going to Moorfields Dubai, Imperial College London Diabetes Centre in Abu Dhabi and every reputable eye specialist in the UAE to see their retinal specialists, it seems that luckily it was a very minor detachment not in my field of vision, and it was old and had repaired itself. But just for precautions they have lasered the retina to keep it firmly stuck down now and hopefully I will have no further problems as the risk is now deemed low.
The whole episode unsettled me though as I reaslised if anything happened to my left eye, I would be rendered completely blind (can't even see the top letter on the chart with my right eye) so I embarked on the difficult task of improving my right eye vision. Because of the placement of the cone and the extent of the KC, it was just not possible to get good vision with glasses or lenses (even the gas permeable which I could not wear anyway) and the toric ICL would improve it but only to a certain degree. I have always just relied on the achivement of good vision in my left eye. So last week I had very minor PRK to slightly smooth the surface irregularities and some further crosslinking on top to re-stabilise it just in case. Luckily my corneas are a decent thickness, but he said there was no chance he would or could correct my full prescription as it would be far too much but he wanted to just create a surface which would mean that correction with a toric ICL, lenses or glasses was more successful. My astigmatism due to the KC was 8D but after the laser it is more regular and has now reduced to 5D, which is closer to the range that a toric ICL can correct (up to 4D I believe) so I will now just have to wait 6 months and keep my fingers crossed that the KC remains stable after the PRK and CXL (it has remained stable since my first CXL which was done in 2007 so here's hoping) and then I will hopefully go ahead and have a toric ICL put into my right eye and have bilateral vision again
I am incredibly lucky that I have health insurance which pays for most medical related things with my eyes, and a company which will pay for anything the insurance company do not cover, which has really given me choices I would just not have had if I had had to pay myself. If I go on to have a second toric ICL in 6 months time, it will have cost close to 10,000 GBP trying to deal with my eye related issues over the last 1.5 years! Scary really!