Alarm; eye pressure was gone

On 7th June Max complained about a very wet left eye. The eye leaked warm fluid that didn’t come from the mucous membranes. In the following days the leaking continued and the eye started to feel like pudding: it seemed that the eye pressure was gone. On 11th June Dr. Zaal examined Max and confirmed that apparently the eye hadn’t been able to heal a stubborn erosion which now had become a perforation. The left eye leaked fluid from the eye chamber and had lost pressure. A surgical intervention had to be done quickly. Dr. Zaal arranged a donor cornea and partially transplanted it on Max during a 2,5 hours session the same evening. Although Max seemed devastated, he regained his forces and smile already the next morning. Vision didn’t yet improve but could do so in the next months. Eye care will be more intensive than ever with, again, frequent control visits in the hospital. All of a sudden Max has entered a completely new phase.

In the weeks after the transplantation Max’ vision improves to about 15%. Nevertheless there are days in which vision is bad. During a visit to dr Zaal on July 11th, Max has a ‘bad day’ and we learn that vascularisation is quite active in the deeper layers of the cornea. The upper layer however, i.e. the transplanted part, is still transparent. This could be coherent to recent research from which scientist tend to deduct that the development of certain cells depends a.o. on surrounding tissue.

There are no signs of rejection at all. Thus, there should be hope. Max will have to wait some weeks or months for the vascularisation to ‘calm down’ before dr Zaal could ‘clean up’ deeper layers of the cornea. Meanwhile he should be prepared for bad moments, being trained in braille. Psychologically it is quite heavy for him.

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