When I was a little kid, I had an eye infection for months that antibiotics
wouldn't heal up.  My doctor thought I had something in my eye, so I had
surgery to remove it.  In essence, they scraped my cornea.  Needless to
say, there was nothing there, so they looked again at my eye, and got me
into see different eye specialists.  Then they realized, hey, this girl
has a viral infection.
I come froma family prone to cold sores, and no one is too sure how or why
I got HSV 1 in my eye, but I'd have to guess that someone, or myself, had a
cold sore, and my eye came in contact with the virus that way.

Since then, 23 yrs ago, I've had 4 flareups that I can recall, it could be
more, but I really don't have a good memory of childhood.  I DID go a good
13 years without a flareup though.  This is now my 2nd recurrence in just
under 2 years.

I do remember being about 11 and having my opthalmologist suggest a
corneal transplant when I was older and done with my education (so I
wouldn't miss time in school I'm guessing).  This prospect was brought up
in 2003 when I had my last infection.  So I'm going to discuss that with
my specialist next week when I see him again.

However, due to all my past infections, I've developed a network of
vessels and capillaries in the front of my eye, a denser network than
normally is found near the cornea.  I was told that this meant I'd have a
higher chance of rejecting a donor cornea.  I was also told that a
transplant wouldn't guarantee that I'd never have another flareup.

As of today, my eye isn't as inflammed or irritated, but my vision, poor
as it typically is, isn't back to what it was before this infection.  It's
still very cloudy and hazy, like I'm looking through a fogged up window
with the one eye.  Normally I can't see detail or anything with it anyway,
just general shapes.

I'm still seriously debating the surgery though.  If it means I can see
better, and my good eye won't be as overworked, it's worth it in my
opinion.  And I've read medical articles in the past of people who have
had corneal transplants because of this who didn't have another occurrence
of the virus.  

I think I have a lot to discuss with the specialist.

Oh, there was something that baffled the doctors I saw this week though.
I have a small dense white dot by my iris, that they weren't sure of at
first, and had to call in another doctor for his opinion.  Apparently it's
a concentration of white blood cells, but despite the antiviral and
antiinflammatory drops I'm taking, it hasn't decreased in size at all.  It
almost looks like a little cataract, not much bigger than the period on
your keyboard key.

I don't know if this is of any help to anyone reading this, but I really
didn't mean to worry or scare anyone who may have a relative or friend
affected by herpetic keratitis.  It may be that my corneal scarring is
worse than typically expected because of the surgery I had as a child, or
perhaps not.  But each time my eye gets infected again, the corneal ulcers
reappear, and cause more scarring.

Sorry about the huge post here.  
leigha