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Cataract Surgery -
from a High Myope's Point of View |
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“You’re not going to like this,”
said my OD after a scant five seconds of scoping my eyes.
“You’re developing some pretty ripe cataracts.”
Yikes! This after many years of
“remarkably clear” lenses. But alas, further examination
revealed that both eyes were in fact developing cataracts at
a rapid rate. However, instead of the usual wailing and
gnashing of teeth that most people do when receiving this
news; I began thinking, “Oh boy, now I can finally get rid
of my thick lenses!”
You see, I’ve been in Optical
for over 36 years now, starting as a lab rat, learning
Opticianry from people a lot smarter than me and paying
attention when wiser heads than me spoke. This process still
goes on today. Anyway, now I was finally going to get some
action concerning my ever-dimming vision.
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My prescription was steadily
getting worse over the last two years after being rather
stable for the last ten years or so. I still smile when I
get some young customer that complains that they’re “nearly
blind as a bat” - and they’re only a -.50 sphere. They
start to understand a bit more when I tell them that I’m
thirty times more nearsighted than they are.
I have seen some pretty good
results from cataract surgery, so I was looking for some
relief. We had a long-time customer who had always been
+11.00 spheres OU so we always had to fit her in small
frames. She brought in her new Rx after surgery that was
+1.00 spheres OU. So I told her that she just lost 90% of
her prescription and did she know what that means? I swept
my arm at the frame boards and said, “Any frame you want
is now open to you - anything you want, any size, any shape
you want - you can now have.” She was just so happy.
Now the roundabout started. I had
selected my surgeon because of a personal friendship and my
OD had also stated that he did excellent surgery. His
incisions were always straight and precise, and he rarely
had any problematic results. So I called his office to set
up my appointment. Surprise! His office was not listed with
our insurance. So they applied to be a vendor, a process
that usually takes six months. Five months later, we changed
our insurance company and guess what? His office was also
not listed with the new company. So again they applied and I
waited.
Meanwhile my prescription was
worsening by about -1.50 sphere every three months or so.
When everything was all ready to go, my Rx had gone from
-11.25 -2.25 X 14 OD and -11.25 -2.00 X 165 OS to -15.00
-2.25 X 15 OD and -15.00 -2.00 X 163 OS. I have been an
advocate of 1.70 index lenses as a real alternative to the
poor optical Abbe values of 1.67 and 1.74 since in my Rx,
the Abbe was a very noticeable factor in visual clarity.
While the 1.70 index did have better optical clarity and the
1.67 was virtually useless, neither one gave me crisp vision
due to the cataracts. How much I was missing I didn’t
realize until after my first surgery.
My first surgery was on my left
eye. I arrived at the surgical enter with a small amount of
anxiety. I had looked at cataract surgery on the online
video site, so I knew what to expect and my surgeon had
reassured me that it would be quick and fine. So I lay on a
gurney and got a regimen of drops and hooked up to an IV and
pulse monitor. Another round of drops followed, then an
injection and some calming agent, and I was finally whisked
to the operating room. All I could see in the OR was a
bright watery light from the surgical microscope. After a
few minutes of covering my face with a blue cloth, the
surgery started. Again, all I could see was a light with a
shadow moving around in it. My surgeon had said he spends a
little extra time polishing to remove all traces of the
lens, and as I saw the shadow move about I asked him if he
was polishing, to which he replied that he was. Then
everything got much clearer as he positioned the intraocular
lens.
Next up was the collagen
antibiotic-soaked contact lens, and my eyelids were taped
shut and a patch was applied to my eye. I was helped to a
sitting position where the surgeon had a Polaroid photo
taken of us. After getting home, I took it easy and tried
not to move my eye much, as it was pretty itchy. On my visit
to the surgeon the next day he removed my patch and examined
my eye. Everything turned out well and I was amazed at my
new vision, although it was still a bit watery. I could
actually watch TV from 5 feet away - without my glasses (one
eye only though).
However, there was still a very
big problem. My right eye was still -15.00 -2.00 X 165 and
my left eye was a -1.50 -1.50 X 165. No brain in the world
could make those hugely divergent images converge into one
useable image to see with due to the extreme Anisometropia.
I could see about 20/70 through my right eye in the reality
that I had grown used to, while I could see better with my
left eye, but in a totally different reality, due to the
image being about 20% larger than what I was used to. So the
only thing I could do was patch one eye at a time.
If I was watching TV, I would use
my left eye, but it had optic neuritis years ago so there’s
a bad spot just left of center in my left eye that made
reading on the screen difficult. When I drove, I patched my
left eye, as I was used to seeing with my right eye when
driving and the sizes made it easier to judge distance, a
difficult enough task with one eye. So here I was, switching
a vinyl cling patch from eye to eye as the occasion
demanded. If I tried to drive using my operated on left eye,
while things were much clearer than before, the larger size
made it very strange. Imagine riding in a car and looking
out ahead of you while wearing 2X binoculars. Not to mention
that it was just as difficult to use my non-dominant eye as
my dominant eye. Boy, did I ever miss binocular vision.
Finally the day came for the
surgery on my right, dominant eye. The same routine, but
this time there was a bit of pain the next day. And when
they removed my patch, everything had a very orange look to
it. My surgeon put a drop of atropine in and an hour later,
everything returned to normal.
Did I say normal? In fact, now
that I finally had binocular vision again and both eyes were
nearly the same power, a whole new vista opened up for me.
The brightness and clarity was astounding. My cataracts had
become so cloudy that they were preventing a very large
amount of light from reaching my retinas, so everything had
become very dim and very fuzzy. My visual acuity had been
reduced to 20/70 with best glasses. Now everything was so
much brighter and the blues stood out so much more. No more
looking like everything was seen through a dirty yellowed
window. I had prevented myself from doing any driving at
night the last few years, now I can plainly tell taillights
and streetlights far away, and can even read license plates.
So, I ended up going from -15.00
-2.00 X 165 OD to -.50 -2.00 X 18 OD and -15.00 -2.00 X 163
OS to -1.50 -1.75 X 158 OS. Not a bad change and my vision
now is far better unaided than at any time in my life. I can
even appreciate the difference between standard-def TV and
Hi-Def TV now!
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