Did Blaine have a corneal transplant?

[wowbright]

I’ve always assumed that Kurt saying in “Michael” that Blaine had a scratched cornea was a case of misspeaking, since surgery isn’t required for a scratched cornea, and one wouldn’t keep a kid out of school for two weeks.

I thought it might be a corneal laceration, but today I’m reading up on those and it looks like surgery for corneal laceration would probably have happened sooner rather than later (i.e., Blaine wouldn’t have returned home from the hospital before having the surgery). Surgery may have been delayed if the doctors first tried a healing contact lens or tissue adhesive and those failed to heal the laceration.

And he may have been out of school for longer if he had to travel to a distant city for the procedure (or his parents wanted him to traveled to a distant city for the procedure, because of the reputation of a particular surgeon, for example).

So, yeah, this second scenario is conceivable, but now I’m just curious if maybe he had to have a corneal transplant. I’m in a medical database right now, so I guess I could look corneal transplants up right now, but instead I’ll just throw out this random question to livejournal because my friends are smart.

Comments

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

I doubt it. I could be wrong, but in my experience corneal transplants are more for people who have had diseased corneas more than injuries.

My guess is corneal perforation, there would have been a trip to the ophthalmology clinic, followed by a test, followed by possible surgery and eye patches for two to three weeks. Not necessarily no school, but, it's Glee.

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

Maybe throw in an infection and a specialist in a far away city, and that explains the absence from school :) That's what I ended up leaning toward, anyway. Now if only I'll ever finish this fic.

[lavender-love00.livejournal.com]

Corneal transplants are typically reserved for eye diseases (like Fuch's Dystrophy, which my dad has), but can sometimes happen in the case of extreme injury. Which, I suppose, would be the case of rock salt.

I wrote a Michael reaction fic where that's exactly the procedure that Blaine had, so I'm personally a little partial to this as what happened.

(Really, Glee knows nothing about medicine, and especially nothing about eyes, and therefore no scenarios presented are particularly realistic, but this is the closest thing that I could come up with.)

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

That was an awesome Michael reaction fic, by the way, if I haven't told you lately. It was one of the things that made me fall in love with your writing.

[vicki_rae.livejournal.com]

I have Fuch's Dystrophy too *waves at Lavender's dad* so it's entirely possible there may be a corneal transplant in my future.

A corneal transplant for injury isn't common but it's certainly possible. It fits what they did with Blaine, kinda, if you squint a little. Probably the best fit anyway.

But it's Glee so gawd only knows what RIB had in mind.

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

I was so negligent in thanking you and the others for your input! This totally helped me think out a section of a fic I've been working on, and I like to think it's better for it. Thanks so much. And I'd never even heard of Fuch's distrophy before this post ...