"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

They were discovered and the surgery to replace the first one
was set up on an accelerated schedule. I think that this doctor doesn't
want to give people too much time to worry about what could go wrong. :-)


I'd be worried.

So -- the first eye is done, and I've got a couple of weeks of
eyedrops to go, and the next eye gets done something like a month after
the first one.

Considering what is at stake, taking time to make sure the first try went well is very
reasonable.


FWIW There are some fascinating color patterns in the eye during the
surgery. I wish that there were some way to record them.

Yes, you are alert during the whole surgery, as you need to be
able to move the eye at commands -- but you feel nothing, and are given
something via an IV tube to keep you from getting anxious I think. I
personally found it fascinating. Something like fifteen minutes total.

That had to be a bit freaky. Must be a good sedative in the IV if you don't get anxious
while someone is knifing you in an eye.


The original lens is broken up and vacuumed out and then a
rolled-up soft lens is inserted -- all through a tiny hole.

It is that hard? (original)

The vision from the repaired eye is a lot sharper, and the
colors are much brighter -- lacking a yellow tinge which has built up
over the years so it was not noticed until I had a fixed eye to compare
it to.

Lose of function creeps up on you. I bet if a twenty something woke up as a 50 something
they would go, damn, wtf just happened.


If you have a computer based photo processing program, pick a
reasonable photo and modify the gamma to 0.6 to get what the "before"
eye looks like, and to 1.5 to see what the "after" eye looks like. (Of
course, this does not duplicate the color shift. Curtains in the
bedroom with a white and blue check in a large pattern look sort of aged
yellow through the old eye, and nice and crisp white through the fixed
eye.

Another interesting thing about the cataracts is that you don't
notice the color shift, but what you *do* notice is that the focus of
the eye shifts drastically. My eyes used to be good and sharp at
infinity. They had shifted to being sharp at about 10" (254 mm) because
of the added mass of the cataracts in the lens bulging it thicker and
thus focusing much closer.

It is nice to have at least one eye sharp at a distance now.

Does the lense focus? Or is it fixed now?


I made some casual mentions in couple of threads beforehand, but
I did not consider it of the same order of importance as the recent
heart surgeries and pacemaker installations so it was just a casual
mention in threads in which I was active so people would understand why
I dropped out for a day -- I had expected it to be difficult to read and
type much until the patch came off at least.

Vision is right up there in the list of things you don't want to do without. If they
botch heart surgery, you are are dead, eyes, blind. One way it is over, the other way you
have to live with it.

Glad things are working out.


Wes