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When I was about forty years of age, I could feel that I would soon need glasses. I worked long hours in an office at a computer and most of my friends thought that this was the cause of my diminishing eyesight. I only put the specs on like everyone else does and got on with the job.

However, ten years later, my eyesight took a sudden turn for the worse and I was diagnosed with premature senile cataracts, at least that is how they translated it into English from the Thai as I had by now married a Thai lady and moved to her village in rural northern Thailand. I went to a very decent hospital in Pattaya known as the Bangkok Pattaya Hospital and one of their senior eye surgeons examined me.

She confirmed the diagnosis and added that it was to be expected that the other eye would develop a cataract at some time in the future although there was no sign of it at that moment. The next day she carried out an operation to remove the lens from my eye and replace it with a plastic one.

The operation is quite painless although it can get a bit scary and lasts between thirty and sixty minutes. Mine was ‘a long one’, said the surgeon at forty minutes. After an hour’s recovery, a nurse showed my wife and me how to care for my eye and I was permitted to go. My eye was taped up, so I could not see out of it until that evening when my wife put the drops in.

Everything was so vivid and clear. It was truly amazing. I had to keep going back for post-operative care for four weeks and then we went back to the village. I cannot convey how fantastic it was to be able to see clearly again without glasses after what I realized was more than a decade.

The eye or the brain or both take a a little time to adjust to the new lens and your eyesight improves for a period of time which can be from six to twenty-four months. Within six months, my other eye began to pack up. It had borne the strain of two eyes for long enough and now that there was a working replacement, it decided to quit fighting the impending cataract and gave up.

I was not back to square one because my plastic eye was far better that the other one had been in comparable circumstances. So, about six months later, I went back to Pattaya to get the other one done. The operation was the same with the same surgeon. I went back the next day for the check up, but it was a long wait for my turn and the time came around for my drops. My wife put them in but as I removed my protective eye-covering, I noticed the English-language newspaper on the table in front of me.

That was not extraordinary, but what was certainly curious was that I could read it - without glasses for the first time in fifteen years! I could see the look of revulsion on my fellow patients’ faces as they looked into my eye so I put the covering back on. (After the operation the eye swells up and it as black as an eight-ball with a blood-red dot in the middle - it is quite scary).

When I went in to see the surgeon and told her about the newspaper, she smiled. “Yes”, she said, “that was my surprise, I put a long-distance lens in last time and a reading lens in this time. Your brain will decide what you are looking at and use the correct eye”.

She had not told me because a small percentage of brains cannot perform this trick, which is why some people cannot take to variofocals too.

That was a year ago and both plastic eyes and brain have ‘bedded in’ nicely. I can read a book and drive a car without specs and my world is so brilliant. I still wonder at the brightness everyday. I had not noticed the light getting gradually dimmer for fifteen years.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now involved with Designer Spectacles. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Spectacles Direct.

You have to be so cautious with your eyes because they can so easily be damaged beyond repair. My eyesight began to deteriorate as I reached forty, like most people. My friends and family put that down to the fact that I was sitting in front of a computer screen for about twelve hours a day and had done since I was twenty-eight. Still, there was nothing I could do about that, that was my work. I was self-conscious of wearing glasses at first, but you soon become over that.

My eyes continued to get worse and at a greater rate than friends of a similar age, but I considered that that was merely the luck of the draw. However, one morning about ten years later, I woke up and it was as if my glasses were dirty. I spent the next day or two cleaning them, but I could not seem to shift the dirt on the right lens.

By that time, my vision was too bad to see without glasses and I only had the one pair. I had moved to rural Thailand and procuring a second pair was no easy feat.

After a couple of days of cleaning and polishing my glasses a friend offered to take me the 75 km to the nearest good hospital. The opthamologist looked in my eyes and said: “I am very sorry, but you are senile”. I had been called mad before, but not senile. I was fifty-two. It is not really a statement that beggars a question, so I just looked at him and put on a glum expression, hoping that I was not confirming his diagnosis.

He looked at me and then looked in his desk, pulled out a book and opened it. “You have premature senile cataracts” he corrected himself. I was not certain whether that was any better as it implied that other parts of me may start failing early as well. Anyway, I thanked him and left. I had no idea what to do next, but at least I knew better that to continue wasting my time attempting to clean my already spotless spectacles.

My wife is very practical and she arranged for us to go to an even better hospital 650 km away. I was seen by one of the hospital’s senior eye surgeons within the hour and was told that I had a cataract in my right eye and that there was a good chance that I would develop one in the left eye too. Then she shocked me by asking: “Do you want me to remove it now?”

It was too big a decision for me to make there and then without any information, so we discussed the operation, she gave me a leaflet and I made an appointment to return the next day. The next day, I was in the operating chair. I was not going to have Laser Correction, but the full replacement of the lens. The operation is carried out under local anaestetic and does not hurt but it can be uncomfortable at times.

The surgeon cut a small opening of two millimetres a little to the outside of the colour of my eye and squirted in some liquid. She then vibrated that liquid with ultra-sound to break up the lens in my eye and flushed the pieces of lens out with more fluid before inserting the new lens through the same hole.

By this stage of my life, I could just see light and dark with my right eye, but at one moment my eyesight just ceased entirely. It was like looking at a window shatter before your eyes merely to realise that there was nothing but blackness beyond. Now I definitely was blind in that eye. There was a bit of discomfort, but the surgeon kept talking to me and then she said: “Wait, wait, wait, can you see me?”

And I could.

Absolutely perfectly. Better than I would have been able to fifteen years before, but everything was so bright that it dazzled. I had not noticed how dingy my world had become. A cataract is like having a net curtain over a window, it cuts out a great deal of light. Therefore, the first thing you become aware of whilst you have had a cataract removed is a flood of light. Your world literally is a brighter place - to such an extent that the light hurts.

Be cautious with light after the surgery, it cannot cause lasting damage, but it really does hurt. A passing car can reflect sunlight into your eye and catch you unawares. If you are driving or riding a bike, it could be very dangerous. Another danger is reflection. You have an open wound on your face which can be infected by wind-borne contamination.

The week following the operation is a lot more risky than the procedure itself. You have an open cut in your eye which they do not stitch. It is left to repair itself, which is not a problem, if you take care.

You have to put two types of drops in your eye four times a day and prevent getting water in your eye at all costs. That means do not go out in the rain and do not wash your hair in the shower. Dirt and consequent infection are your biggest enemies, so put the drops in regularly, avoid dust (and the powdered dog faeces mixed in with it) and all water and be very careful of light.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with Designer Spectacles. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Spectacles Direct.