A bit of background on me: I am a 30-year-old Computer Support Engineer from Spokane, WA. I was diagnosed with Keratoconus (KC) in the Spring of 1989, at the end of my sophomore year in High School. Keratoconus is a degenerative thinning of the cornea. The thinning causes a "cone" on the cornea to form, a bulging that severely impairs vision. It's different for everyone, but for me, it caused shapes to blur down and to the right, so that the headlights of an oncoming car appeared as a backwards comma several times larger than the car itself. Above is an example of how simple shapes became unrecognizable to my bad eye. My right eye had KC much worse than the left, but since the transplant, it's the other way around. Anyway, this page chronicles my experiences that led up to and spun off from a cornea transplant. Hope this helps.
-Hank Wirtz

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