No one knows for sure what causes cataracts, but it may have something to do with not eating the required 6 daily helpings of fruits and vegetables and not flossing your eyeballs twice a day. It also seems that age has something to do with developing these nasty little blobs, which can occur unannounced anytime after age 50.
There was once a time when I could not only read license plates on cars ahead from as far away as 100 yards, I could also see which month the registrations expired. My kids called me “Long Eyes”.
But on a recent trip to North Carolina, a sign which noted the distance to Tennessee read something like this: “Tcn9j#zee 2^1 melps .”
This wasn’t good, I could tell. Also, I found myself struggling with the clues on crossword puzzles, for me a daily and sacred event.
My optometrist had told me sometime back that cataracts were beginning to form, but it would probably be many years, if ever, before I would have to deal with them.
However, a visit to my ophthalmologist, Dr. Todd Long, last fall indicated that the cataract in my left eye was flourishing and pretty much taking control of that eyeball. He said I may need cataract surgery sooner rather than later.
“What does that entail?” I inquired.
Dr. Long said he would stick a needle in my eye, and then he would cut a hole in the front of my eyeball, insert a tiny sledgehammer through the hole to loosen the hardened cataract and suck it out with a straw.
Well, he didn’t use those exact words, but that’s what my brain told me he was saying.
“There is no immediate hurry,” he said. “I’m ready when you are.”
I figured I’d be ready for that procedure about two weeks after Hell Froze Over, so I put it off.
Soon, I couldn’t even read the “T” in “Tennessee” and the 6 down and 6 across clues in my crossword puzzles were on the same line. When I watched TV at night, I had to shut my left eye and squint through the right one to see the picture. My wife said I looked like Popeye without the pipe, muscles and sailor hat. Since this appeared inevitable, I scheduled the cataract procedure.
In advance of surgery, Dr. Long called in a prescription to my pharmacist for three small vials of eye drops – which collectively cost the equivalent of the Gross National Product of Portugal. I don’t know what they put in those drops, probably liquefied diamonds.
Because I would be put to sleep, I had to fast the day of surgery and skipped my adult beverages the night before, which would really have helped in this moment of pending doom.
The next morning, I could sense how a guy on Death Row might feel on the day they pulled the switch.
Since this was outpatient surgery, I didn’t have to go to an actual hospital, though there was no shortage of folks in blue uniforms bustling about. Dr. Long’s nurse, Igor, came to my room early and put approximately 250 drops of various liquids in my eyes, so I wouldn’t get an infection and have my eyeball fall out. I guess it was worth it, but I hate drops.
Then they wheeled me into the execution, I mean operating room, IV in tact. After that, I’m not sure exactly what they did, but they clamp your eye open and shine all the known natural light in the universe in the eye with the cataract, so they can see where to put the sledgehammer. They say they put me under for about five minutes when they numbed the eye, but how do you know when one eye is closed and the other stapled open?
It was over in about 25 minutes. I think they water-board prisoners longer than that, so it went about as well as could be expected and there was really no pain, except for the time they flushed my eye with turpentine, so it wouldn’t get infected and fall out later.
After the procedure, Dr. Long used a roll of duct tape and put a patch and a steel plate over my eye. He wanted to make sure I wouldn’t scratch out the new lens on the first night.
The next morning, when they removed the patch, the left half of the room was a brilliant white while the other half was like trying to see underwater in a muddy pond. Looks like my right eye will need the tiny sledgehammer soon.
On the drive home, however, there was a Tennessee license plate ahead, and I could read every letter.
Cataract surgery? Hey, it’s really not that bad!