A new outlook on life ~ March 8, 2001

by David Heiller

“Did you get a good cornea?” I asked Dr. Skorich. I was lying in the pre-operational room at Miller Dwan Medical Center on Wednesday morning, February 28.

Dr. Daniel Skorich answered that yes, the numbers looked good. “It came from Florida,” he said.

David in pirate-mode on his banjo.
He had three cornea transplants. (One didn't do so well.) 
Each one was a time of gratitude and hopefulness.

“So you’re going to have a sunny disposition,” the anesthetist joked as he wheeled me into the operating room.

By this time I had a very sunny outlook on life. It had a lot to do with whatever it was he had injected into my intravenous tube. I didn’t have a care in the world. I wasn’t worried at all about having my old cornea cut off and a new one—from Florida!—sewn on.

That’s what happened over the next hour. I could see out of my left eye, which was draped with a cloth. My right eye was open, but I couldn’t see out of it. That was the result of another shot that Dr. Skorich had given me under the eye.

He gave me updates during the operation. “We’ve got the old cornea off,” he said.

Great, I thought. I couldn’t seem to get the words to come out of my mouth.

“We’ve got the new cornea half on,” he said a bit later.

Take your time, I thought.

“A couple more sutures.”

No problem.

Then it was over. Dr. Skorich said that it went well and it was a good match. He looked tired—it was his fifth corneal transplant of the day. I was wheeled to my hospital room, and 90 minutes later I was on my way home.

It is hard to imagine how uncomfortable those surgeries might have been. 
David was not one to complain, and kept his upbeat attitude.

I wore a metal patch on my eye that day and night, then went back to Dr. Skorich the next day. His nurse took off the patch. The vision in my right eye was blurry. That’s normal, Dr. Skorich said a few minutes later. It will take about two months for the new cornea to adjust and for the swelling to go down. Then he will start removing stitches, which will reshape the cornea. He might leave some stitches in forever once he gets the shape right. “You need the patience of Job,” he told me.

I’ve lived with lousy vision for most of my life, I thought. Six months is a piece of cake.

If all goes well, after about six months my vision will be pretty close to normal, probably 20-40 or so. Then I’ll get a prescription for glasses that will make it perfect.

That’s something I haven’t had for a long time. When I went to the University of Minnesota at age 18, an eye doctor told me that I had karataconus, an eye disease that causes the cornea to become cone-shaped. It can’t be corrected with glasses, but it can be corrected with hard contact lenses. So I wore contact lenses for the next 29 years. The karataconus kept getting worse, and doctors had a more difficult time fitting my eyes with contact lenses.

A corneal transplant had never occurred to me. I thought I would always have bad vision and contact lenses that sometimes gave me fits.

Then Cindy heard about the cousin of a friend who had karataconus, and how her vision had been corrected with a corneal transplant. It’s funny how things like that work, how a casual conversation can lead to positive changes. We found out the name of her doctor—Dan Skorich in Duluth—and the rest is history.

Two nights after the operation, I walked out to the garage to do a chore. I looked up at the heavens, at the moon and the countless stars. When was the last time you looked at the night sky, I thought, thinking of my new eye. Whoever you were, thank you.

Modern medicine is a miracle. I say that with a knock on wood, because my new cornea and I have a long way to go. But to quote Humphrey Bogart, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.