Hi everybody,

My name is Iván and I´m a Spanish guy who is currently suffering a really nasty central corneal ulcer.

My ordeal started the 28 of August while I was travelling with my girlfriend in Laos when my eye started to get swollen after a van trip. I´m a contact lens wearer so at first I though it was just a bad case of conjuntivitis. After a day suffering from terrible pain and vision loss I visited a doctor in Laos, who told me I should put some drops in my eye (corticoids) and wait for the pain to go away. I did, but my eye got worse and my girlfriend and I decided to call our insurance and ask them to look for a proper doctor to have a look at my eye. The "doctor" who I had seen was a woman dressed in traditional Lao clothes and who appeared at the surgery carrying a bunch of spring onions. At least she washed her hands before inspecting my eye. Well, I was in the Four thousand Islands, and I couldn´t expect to get anything better.

After contacting my insurance (luckily I had paid for a travel insurance) I was flown to Bangkod, and was treated by a guy called Chanet, who was a proper eye doctor. His diagnosis was that I was suffering from a very bad corneal ulcer, and he recommended me staying at hospital to be treated. I was admitted and spent the next two weeks in a lovely Bangkok hospital, being treated with very agressive antibiotics around the clock. Finally the infection got better and I could fly to Spain.

Doctor Chanet told me I should expect to lose some vision because the ulcer was very central and it would leave a nasty scar, and that if I was very lucky after a few months I could maybe get 30/20 or 40/20 vision in my right eye. I used to have 20/20 in that eye after having my vision corrected by my contact lens. According to doctor Chanet the ulcer was relatively superficial, and the scar wouldn´t be too bad if properly treated.

I have forgotten to say that when I got to Bangkok my visión was so bad that the only thing I could see was the hand of the doctor about 5 inches from my face, and that only if he moved it. By the time I left hospital my vision was still terrible, but I could see shapes and colours. My eye was terribly painful in daylight, and I had to wear very thick sunglasses even in dim light.

Have a look at the pictures to see the evolution of my corneal ulcer during these two weeks. I will continue writing in this blog over the next weeks and months to let you know how it goes.