Hydrops and driving

[GarethB]

Louise,

I did see the blind guy on Top Gear, and wonderd how well I could do without lenses!!

My Holiday in 2004 was racing my rare 30 year old Ford Capri round the old circuit of the Nurburgring in Germany. It is the longest (14 miles long) and most dangerous race track in Europe. My car only has a rear view mirror. A week later I found I had a problem with my grafted right eye and the 600 mile round trip plus 200 miles racing was all done well below the legal limit to drive.

The onset of the problem was so gradual I had not realised.

Still do not have the guts to go for the blind driving landspeed record. Currently held by a blind British gentleman at I think 180 miles per hour. I did have a picture of him with the car and his guide dog!

With little sight, I am capable fo pursueing just as many dangerous and life threatening hobies as the next person.

Gareth

[Louise Pembroke]

You've got balls Gareth! So has the blind man & dog with the record.

[rosemary johnson]

Louise asked about multiple hydrops:
Well, one can have one in each eye. That's two.
I'm told it is very rare to have more than one in the same eye.
Ken at Moorfields was rather surprised when I went in one appointment and said I thought I'd had a (comparatively small) secnd hydrops in my left eye.
He said he didn't think so, not twice inthe same eye.
Then he looked at it down the slit lamp and concluded I was right.
Then it happened again about a year later.
Need I say this....... I'm very unusual!!

As regards grafts - logic says it would be unlikely - or at the least, a sign something was wrong with the graft.
Rosemary

[Louise Pembroke]

Unusual in a way I guess you didn't want to be Rosemary! Sorry you've had several Hydrops, I did think one in each eye was typically the maximum.
Have the further episodes affected your vision? [hope not]
Yes I guess as Hydrops is part of Keratoconus, then grafted KC free corneas should not develop them.
Ken, he's an excellent practitioner I really respect him.

[rosemary johnson]

Louise asked about the hydrops affecting the vision:
The first one - not at all, once it had cleared up and healed over.
The second - ye-es, it felt funny for some while. But it sort of settled down after several months. Or maybe I just got used to it.
The third and fourth - not really, but they were only little ones (the fourth, I had a scleral back in a week later - not ideal as the eye was very sore, but the other one was also sore and I had work to do (I was leaving a job and had to get things sorted out before I went).
The most noticeable effect of the 3rd and 4th were that the eye felt more sensitive and got sore more easily and sooner than normal - and this took, oh, 9 months to a year to get back to normal.
Nothing I could really point to easily, just a feeling I used to have better tolerance than this.
It was complicated by the fact that about 10 weeks after the 4th I went out to Africa to do volunteer work on an AIDS project - and got lots of hay fever from unfamiliar types of pollen, plus irritation from the insecticide sprays, smoke from mosquito coils, etc etc - and I was on malaria tablets. Those together are probably enough to make assessing any health effects difficult!
Rosemary