Corneal Stitches

Also known as "Corneal Sutures", they are sewn in as to ensure that the newly transplanted cornea stays in place and attaches well to the rest of your eye as it is supposed to do.

After the surgeon carefully and skillfully lays the cornea in to position, he/she will thread a specialized sewing needle as to begin the suturing process.

The following is a picture of one of the types of needles that they will use on the cornea. It is called a Kalt Corneal Needle.

They will use the claw-like needle to thread the corneal stitches through to attach the new cornea in place.

There are a couple of different variations as to how the stitchings are done. And every doctor has his or her preference. Plus it also depends on the patient and their needs as well.

One is called "Interrupted". Which means that instead of a "zig-zag" effect, there is one line stitchings that kind of resemble the lines around the sun from a child's drawing.

The other suture possibility is called "Continuous". That type of suturing looks (to me) something like a drawing (yep, I'm stuck on kid pictures lol) that a child made, using the old drawing toy called a Spirograph.

Then there are some cases where the doctor uses BOTH of the techniques. In the same eye. Again, it's done on a case-by-case basis.

The following is an example drawing of the sutures that I had described above.

Post transplant, over time as healing progresses and all is well, the Corneal Specialist will look over the eye and eventually decide that it's time to start to remove stitches. But not all are out at once. It's a gradual and even a bit of a tedious process.

When it's time, the doctor will ask for his Nurse Assistant to go grab the removal kit. It will have two things in its sterile packaging. A forceps tool and a blade tool.

These are called a "Meyerhoffer Chalazion Curette". They help (as long as I do indeed have the correct blade) to cut the stitch(es) that the doctor wishes to remove.

The above set of "tweezers" are called "Arruga Curved Capsule Forceps". And hopefully, I do have the correct pair. Once the appropriate stitch(es) have been sliced loose, then the tweezers are used to (gently) pull the stitch out from the cornea and eye area.

Anyway you slice it (get it?? lol) they must use a blade and tweezers to cut and remove the sutures. They are not dissolve-able. So removal is indeed a must.

There are VERY rare occasions though, that do warrant stitches to stay in place for the patient's life.

But before that, they will place in some numbing eye drops and use an eye separator. This way, there is no pain and no chance of you closing down the eye as it is being worked on.

The Eyelid Speculum Device is usually metal and looks like the following...

And your eye looks like this after placement....

And no, it does NOT hurt to have it placed under the lids, nor is it painful as it is within the eye area. Cold. That's about it. But then you have the drops placed in and all is well.

One of my awesome pals from Twitter and Facebook (we initially "found" one another through a friend of a friend on Twitter) has recently had a corneal transplant done, due to having Keratoconus (cone shaping of the cornea). Brooklin (ItsBrooklin on Twitter) is also a professional photographer who does great work with picture-taking.

Earlier in the week, while on a shoot, Brooklin had a buddy take a picture of his eye where all of his stitches were in. For Brooklin's case, he had BOTH the Continuous, as well as the Interrupted suturing performed on his transplant eye.

First of all, THANK YOU Brooklin for letting me use your eye as a prime example of explanation for this post. You couldn't have timed posting the picture really any better. And also, dude... You have BEAUTIFUL brown eyes. They are like Amber Brown. My favorite shade of brown.

Well, I hope that this will put your mind at ease, as well as help you to better understand the process of having stitches both placed in, and removed from your eye once you have had a Corneal Transplant. It looks scary to go through. But really, it's not too bad. Personally to me, the worst part is honestly the speculum.

"I'm A Survivor".... My Cornea Donation PSA Video.

Because of my own stupidity and having probably the world's biggest brain fart, I had to start a new YouTube account. To view it and (hopefully you will) subscribe GO HERE.

It had taken me most of one evening, and a majority of an afternoon to piece together a video that is just over four MINUTES in length. To say I put all of myself in to the project is well, a bit of an understatement. But, here is the finished product.




It's not as good as some people's videos/PSA's . But I think that I got the point across.

The "Founder" of Sight Resorative Services.. A History Lesson

Richard Townley Paton, M.D. was a man with a mission. A mission to retrieve and safely keep cornea tissue at the ready for doctors to use of their patients in need of the Gift of Sight.

In 1944, Dr. Paton had founded the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration in Manhattan, New York, along with his partner, Dr. John McLean of New York Hospital. A place that would help with harvesting, testing, readying, and transporting viable corneas to doctors and the patients in need of help in regaining their sight through corneal transplantation.

Dr. Paton also did some of the earlier works of helping to perfect the surgical procedure, before Founding the wonderful and now American-wide acclaimed, eye bank.

Some of his corneal donations came from those within the prison settings of convicts whom had consented to the donation of their eyes after their death by execution in Ossining, NY.

The Eye Bank, which is on East 64th Street, was the first organ/tissue banking system to accept eye donations. And it was a joint-effort institution between a total of twenty-one New York hospitals.

From that point on, more eye-collective banks were beginning to open throughout the country. Slowly but surely, more banks opened, and more people had their sight saved, and their lives more enriched due to the thanks and ingenuity of two men who forged a path to a positive means to restore sight to those that otherwise had little to zero chance of ever seeing again.

Medical advances of today in the world and works of sight restoration have made them to be THE most successful transplant of all transplants done in the United States and around the world.

At the age of eighty-two, on February 27th, 1984, Dr. Paton sadly passed away. But not before completing his mission of giving the Gift of Sight to as many people as he could. Thanks to him, myself and MILLIONS of people around the world are seeing things that most of us take for granted.



(initially posted to YouTube on April 27, 2011)

Transplanted (literally lol) post from main blog... "Putting My Worst Face Foward"

As a means to kick start this new blog page, I figured I would serve it well by making it a "transplant recipient" as well. Of a post I happened to actually write up YESTERDAY of all things (lol)...

I didn't always see myself as "pretty". In honestly any sense of the word.

I was your average American tomboy girl. I loved being barefoot, in jeans or shorts and a comfy shirt. I hated dresses and makeup. In fact, I rarely, if ever wear either of the latter to this day. And I'm about to turn thirty-five.

As a teen, I had your basic teen acne. Or so I'd thought. I had some pretty icky breakouts. Especially around the time of a hormonal flux at the nearing of my menstrual cycle.

After years of trying everything, by my 19th birthday, it all just went away. I went on with my life. Had gotten married, had a child, divorced. Remarried, had two more children. Also I'd lost a child in between the middle and youngest.

That's also when my breakouts came back. Right near the loss of that baby in 2003. And they came back with a vengeance.

After having my youngest child, who is now seven years old, and in the First Grade, things only had become worse. But I figured that over time, with my hormones getting back to a normal level, everything would just clear up again.

Oh how WRONG was I with that assumption. If anything, they had become worse.

By the time she was a year old, my face went to looking like this with Rosacea...

And yes, it steadily got worse than this. To the point that it hurt me emotionally, psychologically and even socially.

I hated leaving my home. I didn't like to be out in public. Not looking like that! People would stare. Little children would ask what happened to my face, as they pointed and had that look of disgust upon their faces.

There were times that I was even embarrassed to be around my family, wondering what they thought of how I looked. On occasion certain members of the family would "grill" me on what I ate, what I used to clean my face and whatnot.

I did NOTHING wrong. I ate NOTHING wrong. It was NOT my fault. But it certainly felt like I did SOMETHING wrong.

Eventually the Rosacea went in to an area of the body I had NEVER heard of it even being possible.

My eyes. But it primarily attacked my left eyeball. And I went to a Ophthalmologist who sadly MISTREATED me for the wrong infection. In the end, the Ocular Rosacea (Subtype 4) ate away most of the cornea (outer window of the pupil that is your eye's lens) in the left eye.

At times, my face looked like this man's...

And yes, my eye would like like the one in this picture...

In the end, after my cornea had perforated (had a hole in it), I looked like this..

Not even two weeks later, thanks to Ocular Rosacea eating away my cornea, I had no choice but to have an emergency-based Corneal Transplant (Keratoplasty) and required a full graft of another person's cornea after they had died and were an organ/tissue donor.

Here I am 2-weeks post-op...

And here I am 2 YEARS later...

As for the Rosacea, it is now under control!! I am on Doxycycline pills. And will most likely be on and off of them for the rest of my life.

Plus, soon, seeing as I can no longer have children, we are going to try a cream medication after removing me from the Doxycycline pills in a few months. And if need be, I may even end up being on both to ensure that when I have an "attack of the pimple kind", it will not be that bad, and will be staved off from being inside my eye.

Here I am today, pimple/Rosacea free (for the most part)...

I still have breakouts. Mainly around my cycle. But it's now just a bump here and a bump there. Yes, they CAN be painful, swelled and very red. But at least I'm NOWHERE near as horrible looking as back in the time of my youngest being a baby.

I'm more confident, knowledgeable about my conditions and am no longer afraid to walk out of my home, only to face ridicule from strangers young and old.