The Bionic Science Writer
I am old and until recently I wore glasses with very
strong progressive lenses- better known as “trifocals”. Without glasses I was myopic meaning I could not see things
far away. I was also hyperopic, meaning could not see things close up. And I had astigmatism, meaning my oval shaped corneas
gave me blurred or distorted vision. I
couldn’t see my fingers if I held them at an arm’s length from my body. I could
not walk across the room without my glasses. Even with glasses, my eyesight was
so bad I begged my husband to buy a 70 inch TV so that I could see the screen
from 10 feet away on the couch.
When I saw my friendly ophthalmologist, for my yearly
exam he informed me that due to many years of reading books, while sitting in
the sun, I had damaged my already bad eyes to the point where they had
developed cataracts. Really, I’m practically blind and now I’m going to be even
blinder? Thank you so much.
Cataracts are a very common, and not the worst thing that
can happen to your eyes as you age. Your eyes have a lens, and it works like
the lens on a camera. Basically light comes into the eye through the cornea. Behind
the cornea is the lens which focuses the light on the retina. This results in an
image being sent to the brain. A cataract clouds the lens, which in turn cuts
down on the light and images being sent to the retina. If you want to know what
a person with cataracts sees, smear a thin layer of Vaseline on a pair of 3-d
movie glasses and walk around the house. You’ll get the idea.
When you have cataracts the world is a strange looking place.
Snow white colored objects appear to be
ivory and bright colors are dull. Your
life looks like a laundry detergent commercial, where clothes fade. Not only
are colors not the same, but everything is just slightly out of focus even if
you are wearing prescription glasses. You don’t
want a person with cataracts to drive you anywhere after dark. It’s downright
scary as night vision is a problem.
If you’ve ever seen a person or even a pet that has a
milky colored eye, you are probably looking at a cataract. The clouding is
sadly just a part of growing old. While
it is a common problem for people in their 60’s, you can develop cataracts at a
younger age.
If you wear glasses with transitional lenses, the kind
that change color in the sun, these glasses are not dark enough to keep you
from getting cataracts. You’d have to
have frames with very dark colored UVA, UVB, polarized lenses that wrapped around
your face and kept all light out in order to have some level of protection and
even then, it might not be enough. Most doctors believe that to shield your
eyes and skin from the harmful rays of the sun the appropriate face wear is a
welder’s helmet.
My doctor said that having cataracts wasn’t bad news
because he could fix my sight while he was scraping out the clouded lenses. Now this is the interesting part: he wasn’t
going to laser my eyes, but was instead going to put in intraocular lens or
IOL. Let’s put that in more layman terms:
implants.
Those of us of a certain age might remember the 70’s
series, The Six Million Dollar Man
and his girlfriend, the Bionic Woman.
After the surgery, that would be me! I
would have bionic eyes. My husband was very excited when he learned that I was
going to have implants. He was very
disappointed when le learned they were
those kinds of implants.
If you are faint- hearted, you might want to skip the
next few paragraphs.
Surgery
The doctor schedules operations so that you have your
left eye done on say, a Monday, and your right eye done a week later. The waiting room is full with standing room
only. The operation is about 10 minutes, meaning they can move 50 people
through in a morning. Based on the
number of people in the room, cataract surgery is very common and very popular.
The admitting nurse asks each patient to describe their
level of anxiety. Wizened old ladies with
canes, calmly replied, “I’m fine, deary.” When they asked me I told them I was
having an anxiety attack and that I wanted to run from the room screaming. They offered me a 5 mg or 10 mg Atavan. I
asked for both. They gave me the 10 and as it is fast acting. I immediately discovered
that 10 mg was a bit too much for a woman my weight. I proceeded to pass out. The nurse caught me and put me into a bed. I
woke up to find they had put ice packs on my head and neck, and they were taking
my vitals, while putting stinging drops into my eye. The doctor walked by, took
one look at me and said, “She’s just a drama queen, bring her in next.”
As they are wheeling me into the operating room, the
nurse starts squeezing ice cold gelatinous goop into my eye. I’m still having
an anxiety attack, but now am too stoned to be able to run from the room. I
have to lie there as they position a light strong enough to reach from earth to
the moon over my eye. Next the doctor
puts a thick white sticky diaper over my face, presses into place and cuts a
hole into it over the eye on which he is operating. He puts more goop into my
eye. They now start pumping oxygen under this shield to keep me from passing
out again.
If you’ve ever had
a cavity filled at a dentist, you are probably familiar with a rubber dental
dam they clamp onto your teeth. The
surgeon uses something similar on your eyes and it’s very Clockwork Orange in feeling. So now I’m wide awake, still filled with
panic as the doctor begins to cut a slit in my eye.
Dr. F, only cut a tiny opening in the eye and used a
delicate instrument to scrape away or remove the clouded part over my lens. I
know it was only a small cut but it felt like he was removing my eyeball from
the socket. And he wanted to have a conversation while he was doing this. The reason you are awake for the procedure is
that you have to try to move your eye into different positions and not roll it
back into your head. Good luck with
that. After the cataract was gone, the
doctor inserted an artificial lens through the slit and placed it behind my
iris.
Safe to read now
I have an Acrysof IOL tm multifocal lens in both my eyes. Thanks
to these lenses I can now see everything perfectly. I can read the newspaper
without glasses. I can drive without glasses. I can use my computer without
changing the font to 14. I now can wear fashion sunglasses, which I have never
been able to do for lo these 50 years
The downside is that I am still very light sensitive so I wear said
fashion sunglasses all the time, even when I’m at the movie theatre or while I’m
in a meeting. Driving at night is not
wonderful and all lights have a large “halo” around them. When the light hits
my eyes at a certain angle, I’m told that the implants “sparkle”.. No idea if
that’s true, but apparently it looks really interesting.
