I Had My Lenses Changed Today
Jann Burner
April 29, 2006
No, not my eye glasses and no, not even my contacts. Yesterday I had a stranger with a very sharp knife actually slit open my left eyeball, suck out the lens, replace it with an artificial lens and send me home with an appointment to come back in the morning. Quick turnaround. There was no discomfort, no pain and I was totally conscious the entire time listening to him go on about stock investments.
At nine this morning a nurse removed the patch over my left eye and it was like suddenly viewing the world for the very first time. Previously my vision of this world could be compared to a bad, grainy 8mm home movie from the 1950's and then, suddenly, after the operation, my vision was as clear as a cutting edge DVD with hyper-surround sound! I had forgotten how utterly VIVID the details of this world are.
I am one of the millions of Americans who rather suddenly loose their "normal" sight at around age forty. I had always had perfect vision. I had even been an Air Traffic Controller. I had just turned forty and had not noticed anything out of the ordinary until one day I became involved in a minor fender-bender, the other driver and I exchanged licenses and "Bingo"?I could not read the other fellow's license. At first only minor corrective reading glasses were required to remedy the problem. And then, as the years rolled by I finally begin to have trouble seeing at a distance as well. Normal, I was told. Happens to everybody. Welcome to bi-focal world and then the prescriptions became stronger and stronger. Driving at night became a nightmare. Bright lights were torture. And then during one of my periodic eye exams the optometrist casually commented that it looked like I might be getting cataracts. "Cataracts?" I really wasn't even sure what a cataract was.
Cataracts, as it turns out, are characterized by a developmental or degenerative opacity of the lens. It is a gradual and painless loss of vision, often brought about by aging, exposure to X-rays, heat from infrared exposure or systemic disease.. The opacity beneath the lens capsule affects vision out of proportion to the degree of cloudiness, because the opacity is located at the crossing point of the light rays from the viewed object. Cataracts are particularly troublesome in bright light.
I was referred to an eye clinic in a nearby town and began the delicate negations necessary whenever you need something and your medical insurance company doesn't want to pay for it. Finally I was able to untangle most of the financial knots and a date was set?for the left eye. To understate the obvious, I was a little nervous about having my eyeball sliced open and especially because, as they assured me, I would be totally conscious during the entire operation. And they were going to use clamps to hold my eyelids open! "That's O.K.", I said. "I don't mind being absent during the procedure. Put me out. Hey, I'll just leave the room, I mean my mind." They laughed. This specific ophthalmologist was one of the first to use a procedure where there are no needles to the area. The only needle involved in the entire procedure is a standard I-V line and that is a source of saline solution and as a backup in the rare case that something stronger than Xanax and Benadryl is needed. Yes, the only anesthesia given is a Xanax and an antihistamine, in this case Benadryl. Then there are some drops put in the eye to eliminate potential pain at the site of the incision. I can attest there was no pain. No discomfort. During the entire procedure I was very comfortable on a flat padded surface with a large foam pad under my knees while my head rested on a padded ring to keep it stable. I was told to simply stare into a bright light. That was it. After the procedure I commented to a nurse that it seemed to go by pretty fast. She consulted a chart and informed me that the actual removal of my lens and the transplantation of the artificial lens took a little over nine minutes.
Sitting in the waiting room the next day were 19 patients with patches over their left eye. This Tuesday, it turns out, the doctor preferred to do only left eyes. Most of the people in the room were well over fifty. I inquired why this procedure isn't used more widely for anyone who wears glasses to correct distance vision problems. The response was that the insurance companies and Medi-Care will only pay for this procedure to correct cataracts. In the future they do anticipate it being more widely accepted and prescribed as an appropriate procedure. When I came back out of the examining room and back out into the waiting room--with my eye patch removed--I felt like one of the elders in the movie Cocoon after they went for their swim. I wanted to jump and yell HOORAY! But I didn't. I asked a nurse why people weren't more excited? "It's because they expect it", she said. Expect it? Until two months ago I hadn't even realized that it was an option.
Now I have to wait two more weeks before I can have my right eye returned to normal. In the mean time I am awed and humbled by the craft and technology of the ophthalmologist and saddened by the fact that every day between now and then my brain will wrestle with the conundrum of justifying the differences in the world as seen through my left eye and my right. Vision through the left eye is perfect 20-20. Vision through the right eye is now like watching an 8mm movie through a piece of gauze. And my right eye used to be the good one!
Of course there are trade-offs. Without sufficient medical insurance the expense is about the same as a good used car and yesterday, in my mind, I looked like Tom Selleck, and this morning, in the mirror, I looked more like Tommy Lee Jones. Life is full of trade offs. It's all in how you look at it.
At nine this morning a nurse removed the patch over my left eye and it was like suddenly viewing the world for the very first time. Previously my vision of this world could be compared to a bad, grainy 8mm home movie from the 1950's and then, suddenly, after the operation, my vision was as clear as a cutting edge DVD with hyper-surround sound! I had forgotten how utterly VIVID the details of this world are.
I am one of the millions of Americans who rather suddenly loose their "normal" sight at around age forty. I had always had perfect vision. I had even been an Air Traffic Controller. I had just turned forty and had not noticed anything out of the ordinary until one day I became involved in a minor fender-bender, the other driver and I exchanged licenses and "Bingo"?I could not read the other fellow's license. At first only minor corrective reading glasses were required to remedy the problem. And then, as the years rolled by I finally begin to have trouble seeing at a distance as well. Normal, I was told. Happens to everybody. Welcome to bi-focal world and then the prescriptions became stronger and stronger. Driving at night became a nightmare. Bright lights were torture. And then during one of my periodic eye exams the optometrist casually commented that it looked like I might be getting cataracts. "Cataracts?" I really wasn't even sure what a cataract was.
Cataracts, as it turns out, are characterized by a developmental or degenerative opacity of the lens. It is a gradual and painless loss of vision, often brought about by aging, exposure to X-rays, heat from infrared exposure or systemic disease.. The opacity beneath the lens capsule affects vision out of proportion to the degree of cloudiness, because the opacity is located at the crossing point of the light rays from the viewed object. Cataracts are particularly troublesome in bright light.
I was referred to an eye clinic in a nearby town and began the delicate negations necessary whenever you need something and your medical insurance company doesn't want to pay for it. Finally I was able to untangle most of the financial knots and a date was set?for the left eye. To understate the obvious, I was a little nervous about having my eyeball sliced open and especially because, as they assured me, I would be totally conscious during the entire operation. And they were going to use clamps to hold my eyelids open! "That's O.K.", I said. "I don't mind being absent during the procedure. Put me out. Hey, I'll just leave the room, I mean my mind." They laughed. This specific ophthalmologist was one of the first to use a procedure where there are no needles to the area. The only needle involved in the entire procedure is a standard I-V line and that is a source of saline solution and as a backup in the rare case that something stronger than Xanax and Benadryl is needed. Yes, the only anesthesia given is a Xanax and an antihistamine, in this case Benadryl. Then there are some drops put in the eye to eliminate potential pain at the site of the incision. I can attest there was no pain. No discomfort. During the entire procedure I was very comfortable on a flat padded surface with a large foam pad under my knees while my head rested on a padded ring to keep it stable. I was told to simply stare into a bright light. That was it. After the procedure I commented to a nurse that it seemed to go by pretty fast. She consulted a chart and informed me that the actual removal of my lens and the transplantation of the artificial lens took a little over nine minutes.
Sitting in the waiting room the next day were 19 patients with patches over their left eye. This Tuesday, it turns out, the doctor preferred to do only left eyes. Most of the people in the room were well over fifty. I inquired why this procedure isn't used more widely for anyone who wears glasses to correct distance vision problems. The response was that the insurance companies and Medi-Care will only pay for this procedure to correct cataracts. In the future they do anticipate it being more widely accepted and prescribed as an appropriate procedure. When I came back out of the examining room and back out into the waiting room--with my eye patch removed--I felt like one of the elders in the movie Cocoon after they went for their swim. I wanted to jump and yell HOORAY! But I didn't. I asked a nurse why people weren't more excited? "It's because they expect it", she said. Expect it? Until two months ago I hadn't even realized that it was an option.
Now I have to wait two more weeks before I can have my right eye returned to normal. In the mean time I am awed and humbled by the craft and technology of the ophthalmologist and saddened by the fact that every day between now and then my brain will wrestle with the conundrum of justifying the differences in the world as seen through my left eye and my right. Vision through the left eye is perfect 20-20. Vision through the right eye is now like watching an 8mm movie through a piece of gauze. And my right eye used to be the good one!
Of course there are trade-offs. Without sufficient medical insurance the expense is about the same as a good used car and yesterday, in my mind, I looked like Tom Selleck, and this morning, in the mirror, I looked more like Tommy Lee Jones. Life is full of trade offs. It's all in how you look at it.
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