CATARACT SURGERY

Recently I bowed to the necessity of cataract surgery. I know “they” say that one is only as old as one thinks one is. But, I guess I was thinking I was older than I thought I was.

Anyway, I chose an ophthalmologic surgeon who had all the papers on the wall, but who in his last years ran a “factory.” That is, he confines his surgery to taking out cataracts. I wanted someone who had been there before.

He offered, as to all his patients, to put in artificial lenses in both eyes for distance vision, OR one for near and one for distance vision. I chose the latter possibility. I wanted to be able to read without glasses (aids which I had for years hated; and besides, a friend of mine opined that different lenses was an “awesome” choice). So much for the modern meaning of “awesome.”

No one, neither my surgeon nor my optometrist, had said that the “focal length” of my artificial lenses might change. Well, “they did”! After about a year I was wearing new glasses to give me “bilateral vision,” and not only for driving and longer term reading. I was so smart, as a former board-certified internal medicine physician, I did not count on artificial lenses changing focal length! But, “they did”! And, I did pay for glasses that would now “correct” for that change! How come?

As it turned out, the lenses, being artificial, did not change, but the “sac” in which they lay did! At least, that was the explanation that was given to me. Blah, blah, blah. Uh-huh. “Obviously” the sac had shifted somehow so that the lenses “appeared” to have a different focal length!

So, I put this in my blog to warn anyone -- who might read it -- about this possibility.

Hasten to write that I still like my choice of two lenses. I can still read without my glasses; I just have to hold the reading material a bit farther away! (What else is new?)

Dallas Tuthill, M.D.