u/Conscious-Garbage-35

I was recently diagnosed with Keratoconus (a progressive eye disease that causes thinning of the cornea) and just had cross-linking done last month, so I'm still trying to figure a lot of this out and wanted to get a read from people who've either had KC for a while or been wearing scleral lenses.

The main thing I'm confused about is how long the lenses actually last in practice. Most clinics seem to say 3–5 years, but a lot of KC patients online mention replacing them closer to every 2 years because their is an increased risk of infection and the vision just stops feeling as sharp or comfortable over that period. If it's every 5 years, fine. Every 2 years is a very different story financially. Just wondering what people's actual experience has been.

Also looking for recommendations for good local scleral fitters. And for anyone who's already gone through the process, did SHA or private insurance cover any of it? AFAIK, all our contact lenses are manufactured abroad and imported from Europe, Egypt, South Africa and India, so I don't really know if and how that affects coverage.

My optometrist told me a good pair of sclerals can last around 5 years. But from discussing with other folks with KC, I keep reading that most end up replacing their lenses closer to every 2 years.

As far as I know, the infection risk rises pretty significantly when lenses are kept longer than they should be, even if they still seem "fine" day to day.

So now I'm trying to figure out what's actually realistic here. Is 5 years more of a theoretical maximum, while 2 years is what most people end up doing in practice?

Would be interested to read how long people here actually keep their sclerals before replacing them, and if their were any early signs that made you decide it was time replace them?

I graduated from a Russell Group university (UK) with a 2:2 in BSc Computer Science. It took me five years to complete a degree that normally takes three, and I came out of it with no placement year, no internships, and basically no real industry experience.

Most of that time disappeared into a illness. I got seriously physically sick in my final year and spent long stretches in and out of treatment while trying to stay enrolled. I failed my final year twice as a result before eventually dragging myself over the line on a third attempt.

Not long after graduating, my health fell apart again and I was diagnosed with a progressive eye disease that was both incredibly complicated to treat and financially brutal to manage. It eventually left me with significant vision loss (around 20/200) for about a year, and any kind of programming was certainly out of the question.

I was finally able to get a procedure done a few months ago, which has presumably stabilised things, and I was fitted for lenses as well. As surreal as it feels to describe, it means I can actually see again.

The bitter part, of course, is that I'm now nearly 2.5 years out from graduation, nearly three by the summer, with a bachelor's degree that will look strange to any employer because of how long everything took, no work experience in any field, and the feeling that everything I learned has slowly rotted away from disuse, almost like I've never written a single line of code before. I tried sitting down to revise algorithms and data structures the other day, and it became clear pretty quickly that I'm rebuilding from zero.

The one silver lining is that my parents have been willing to support me for another year while I try to get myself back on track, but it's hard not to feel like I'm starting from an impossible position, and even with that time to rebuild their is this anxiety that an extra year on my CV just reads as a deeper gap that will ward off any prospective employer.

I guess what I'm struggling to judge is: what could I possibly do to make myself look credible on paper? Are personal projects and open source contributions actually enough to get through the door for junior roles, or is that mostly wishful thinking on my part? Is it worth mentioning my health issues in a cover letter, or is that the kind of thing that quietly works against you no matter how it's phrased? More than anything, I'm just trying to understand what I could possibly do to have an entry path into the industry, if there even is one.

What's your situation been like? Are you seeing better than 20/20 with glasses, contacts, or scleral lenses?

Was it just early detection, or did things involve procedures like CAIRS, CTAK, PRK, or even a transplant?

Genuinely asking because most scleral lens outcomes I see sit around 20/20 to 20/25, even with a Kmax in the 80's, which is already amazing to think about, so anything sharper than 20/20 feels like someone unlocked an extra graphics setting for their eyes.

I had epi-off done on my better eye a little over a week ago, and I’ve definitely noticed increased HOAs since the procedure, mainly ghosting, starbursts, mild double vision, and overall reduced clarity when reading. I know that's still very early, so I'm not treating any of it as a final result.

What I'm trying to understand is the longer-term picture. Once I started reading more experiences, I noticed quite a few people, expressing that some of these aberrations never fully resolved uncorrected, even well past the usual 3, 6, or 12 month recovery windows. Most of what I've found seems to come from patients who've had epi-off as well, so I'm curious whether the same pattern holds for epi-on, especially Contact Lens-Assisted Collagen Cross-linking (CACXL).

My understanding is that epi-off can introduce more corneal irregularity during healing, which can contribute to an increase in HOAs. With epi-on, particularly CACXL, the approach is more customized, targeting the weaker parts of the cornea, and in theory it may reduce induced HOA changes by preserving more of the corneal and stromal structure. Although I'm certainly not an expert and this is simply my rough understanding.

For those who had epi-on, especially CACXL, did you notice any increase in HOAs after CXL, and did they gradually improve over time or persist? If the latter, what were your Kmax values before and after, and how long did the HOAs take to resolve?

I’m early in my keratoconus journey, just a few weeks out from CXL, and I’ve been told I’ll likely need scleral lenses for my worse eye.

For those who wear them, how much reduction did you see in ghosting, double vision, starbursts, and similar distortions? With strong glasses I can still read, but there’s noticeable ghosting, especially on subtitles where a faint duplicate sits just above the main line.

Did scleral lenses clear that up completely for you guys, or is there still some of it day to day? If you’re also open to sharing, what were your corneal thickness and Kmax, and did that have any effect on getting fitted? Did you have any other procedures like CTAK, CAIRS, PRK and/or a transplant before getting fitted for sclerals and did they help or hurt the quality of your vision with the lenses?

TL;DR: trying to re-enter software engineering after a 3-year health-related gap with no experience and a middling degree.

I graduated with a 2:2 Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from a Russell Group University.

Unfortunately It didn’t go smoothly. I had to repeat my final year twice due to a serious chronic illness, and I only just passed my dissertation as a result.

Things escalated after graduation with a diagnosis of a progressive eye disease (keratoconus) that left me with severely impaired vision for a period. The good news is it's now stabilised following surgery earlier this year. The downside is that, combined with the earlier illness, it effectively took me out of work and study for around three years.

As a result, I don’t have any work experience, and my technical skills have regressed significantly to the point where I’m essentially rebuilding from scratch.

On paper, that leaves me with a 2:2 degree that took five years withy nothing to show for it after the fact, a three-year gap with no employment in any field, and little from university that meaningfully strengthens my CV.

That raises the obvious question: how screwed am I? Is there a realistic way to get my foot in the door? The suggestions I've got are to build strong personal projects that prove my ability, but I've had no success getting any interviews so far. Second suggestion is to get a masters, but being in an out of tretament facilities has bled my bank account dry. Are there other routes that tend to work for people in this position?