Dear Mr. Kolberg,

Please include my following story on your "Patient's Story" page on www.artificialeye.net

First, I wish to thank you for your excellent website about artificial eyes. It was very helpful for me to find out everything I wanted or needed to know about losing an eye before I made my decision about surgery.

My name is Sandy, I am a 19 year old female and living in West
Germany. I just lost my left eye on May 22nd. The loss is due to
glaucoma and a failed corneal transplant operation where many things went wrong. There were problems with the local anesthesia during surgery, the eye started bleeding and lost more than half of it's volume.

My eye doctor has recommended to have the eye enucleated. In
order to achieve a better cosmetic result he has suggested I wear a ocular prosthesis. As I listened to his proposal I was overwhelmed, at first I said "No."  But, after a few weeks of thinking about it, I decided to have the operation because the eye doesn't look that good and other people always seem to stare at me. Despite this, it was still the most difficult decision I ever have made in my life. At first, the surgery was scheduled for April but just took place in the end of May due to a kind of "patient overflow" in the hospital.

At the moment, I feel quite well after having an eye removed, sometimes, I experience pain when I move the other eye around to look at something. Now, I am waiting to have an ocular prosthesis fitted in order to look "normal" again.

I like to say that my fears before surgery were worse than now, I thought of having severe pain after eye removal but that wasn't true. I really felt well when the painful blind eye had been enucleated. I am not unhappy or even depressed, anyway. Positive thinking in that situation was and is very important.

I would love to correspond with other people like me who have gone through the procedure or are waiting to have surgery.

Most Sincerely,

Sandy
sandyk2502@aol.com

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