Airing My Grievances With Steph Curry, My Family, and Keratoconus

Woke up thinking it was a hangover, now I'm mad at Steph Curry. Here's why.

In my mid-twenties, I thought I was untouchable. Like most people at that age, I figured I had plenty of time to worry about real problems later. So, when I noticed my right eye going blurry during a night of drinking, I brushed it off. I made jokes about my right eye being just for show and moved on with life. Little did I know I’d spend the next few years inside that Justin Timberlake album cover from 2013.

A couple of weeks after that night, I decided to visit Vision World on Queens Boulevard. I figured I’d get a new prescription and head back to whatever nonsense I was up to at the time. No big deal. I sat in front of that eye machine — the one with the windmill and the hot air balloon that magically sharpens for a second. But when they tested my right eye, I didn’t see any balloons or windmills, just a weird spiral of colors, a way to best describe it is like when you get that Macbook pinwheel when your computer is trying to tell you you’re doing too much.

I mentioned it to the technician, a Russian woman who sounded like a James Bond villain. “You may have keratoconus,” she said. “Kerato-huh?” I thought she was still speaking in Russian and forgot to switch over. What the hell was keratoconus? She referred me to a specialist in Forest Hills, and naturally, my anxiety sent me into a WebMD k-hole.

That night, I did what any anxious person would do — I Googled “keratoconus.” Thanks to a mix of Adderall and fear, I convinced myself I’d be blind in three weeks. Reddit didn’t help either. Apparently, I needed to fly to Scandinavia for some laser-and-herbs treatment in the mountains. But the real kicker came when I found a YouTube video of a woman claiming Jesus told her she didn’t have Keratoconus. She filmed herself driving, saying, “The doctors lied; I don’t have keratoconus, I never had it, praise Jesus!” Then I thought to myself, thats an oddly specific thing to tell people that you don’t have. It’s like me filming a video announcing “I don’t have shin splints.” What’s the point?

By the time I got to the specialist the next day, I was running on zero sleep, ready for the worst. He confirmed I had keratoconus (which I had already diagnosed on my own), and if I didn’t get surgery, my right eye would keep declining until I’d need a corneal transplant. I sat there trying to keep it together while he casually dropped “corneal transplant” like it was a pizza topping.

The idea of surgery made me want to chain-smoke an entire pack of cigarettes. He recommended collagen cross-linking, a procedure that had been approved that very same year and I found a corneal specialist in Teaneck, New Jersey. Fun fact: the New York Jets’ eye doctor worked there too, which somehow made me feel better.

In 2017, I had my first surgery — which killed two birds with one stone: they implanted an intac (a tiny plastic ring to flatten the cornea) and did collagen cross-linking. The surgery itself was like something from Total Recall — numbing agents, riboflavin drops, and cross-hair lasers. I would add the picture up if I could find it, but I was basically Schwarzenegger in the operating chair. The procedure was painless, but recovery was hell. Every time I opened my eye, it felt like being stabbed by tiny needles, and when I closed it, the protective lens felt like sandpaper against my eyelid. I ran out of painkillers and spiraled into my own personal opioid crisis.

After surgery, the real fun began. I couldn’t stop noticing the stupid plastic intac in my eye, especially at night when every streetlight looked like a halo, and I could see the reflection of the plastic ring inside of my eye. But, as usual, I tried to make the best of it, pretending I was a bionic man, sent from the future and talking in a monotone robot voice for my own amusement, just to make myself giggle. I even rocked a Slick Rick eyepatch for months — probably too many months — but if I was going to suffer, I was going to suffer in style.

By 2019, I was doing the best to ignore my keratoconus, coasting on glasses and overpriced, unreliable contacts. Then I reconnected with my dad’s side of the family and found out keratoconus wasn’t just my problem — it was part of my inheritance. My Uncle Mark, who’s missing an eye from a bar fight, casually mentioned that he, Aunt Mia, and my other uncle, Marlon, also had keratoconus. Mia and Marlon had transplants back in the 90s, and Mark got his in the 2010s. This condition had been lurking in the family tree for decades. It was either I inherited this, or diabetes. Decisions, decisions.

When I found out, my first reaction was, “Great, a fucked-up family heirloom.” I imagined a shirt that read, “Grandpa dipped out and all he left me was a degenerative eye disease no one can pronounce.”

Then came 2020, and with the pandemic lockdown, life hit pause — but my eye problems didn’t. My glasses were still a pain, and those custom $900 specialty contacts were a nightmare. They’d constantly fall on the bathroom floor while I fumbled with the applicator. Sometimes they’d rip, and once I fell asleep with them in, leaving me in an emergency room with cornea abrasions. After a while, I said “fuck it” and stuck with glasses. Dealing with all this during the pandemic added a new layer of frustration.

It was around this time that Uncle Mark texted me saying, “Steph got Keratoconus.” My uncle texts with no punctuation, and often with little context, so my response was, “Steph who?” He replied, “Steph Curry!” Huh? Steph Curry, the greatest three-point shooter in NBA history has Keratoconus? How is this possible? It could’ve have been anybody in the NBA, it could have been Mario Chalmers. But Steph Curry? I immediately started looking for interviews, but all I found was a clip where he briefly mentioned wearing “special contact lenses” while he was warming up before a game. That was it. I was annoyed — why doesn’t he talk about this more? Then I figured maybe he feels like I do — maybe he doesn’t want to be pitied, and doesn’t want to be a part of this community of people he didn’t sign up for, or maybe he’s got so much money that managing his keratoconus is just a minor inconvenience. Meanwhile, I’m over here struggling to get basic treatment.

By 2022, I’d had enough of being overcharged for contacts that did more harm than good. The specialists convinced me to try a new elective surgery, TG-PRK. It was supposed to reshape my cornea and give me 20/20 vision. It sounded like the miracle I’d been waiting for. So I got that surgery. They left the little plastic INTAC in, because apparently, its helping my vision. The healing process this time, was worse than the last. It took months for my eye to fully heal, which my doctor said it would. After six months, I got new lenses, but it didn’t fix everything. The glasses cost me anywhere from $250 to $500 — plus, let’s not forget the vintage frames I was collecting. You know, because If I was going to go blind, I was going to go blind in style.

After a third “touch-up” surgery in 2023, I was hoping this would be the end of my Keratoconus saga, just how the doctor said it would. But after leaving the eyewear store with my new prescription, I looked down at my phone, and the screen looked crooked. It looked like the literal phone in my hand was in italics. I rushed back to the store, hoping it was just a mistake with the lenses. But no matter what they did, my vision was off. My right eye could see far distances better than my left, but everything looked 1.5% more magnified through it. This caused an effect where basic shapes no longer appear symmetrical. Rectangles were lopsided, and the phone in my hand looked like a parallelogram. I panicked.

The doctors acted like they’d never heard of such an issue, and every new lens they gave me didn’t fix it. Meanwhile, I could see better with glasses, but the world still looked like a Picasso painting, unless I had them plastered above the bridge of my nose. As a designer, this was a nightmare. At this point, I felt like I was paying for their experiments on my eyes.

By 2023, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was a guinea pig. Every surgery came with a waiver, and my insurance didn’t cover any of it. My uncle, who had been dealing with his own eye problems, told me that the same center in Teaneck charged him over $7,000 for an evaluation. And being Black, we both had an extra layer of skepticism about the medical system. But this isn’t a sad article, so I’ll leave it at that.

Steph Curry may have keratoconus, but that didn’t make me feel better. If the greatest three-point shooter in NBA history can deal with halos and double vision, maybe I shouldn’t complain. I also shouldn’t complain because my Uncle has one eye, and this compounding onto all of his other vision issues. But it’s still annoying. Looking up at the New York night sky and seeing rings around every streetlamp, and all six visible stars is frustrating. Looking in the mirror without glasses and seeing my face morph into an alien is infuriating. And when I think about Steph casually breaking records while I’m over here navigating life in a Dali painting, it just makes me mad at him all over again — and then once more when I think about how he co-signed that god-awful Good Times reboot.