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This morning I just had the second of two surgeries for eye cataracts. The first eye (right) was done about three weeks ago, and very quickly I found out just how bad my sight had become.   After a couple of easy days of recovery, I could see that my left eye vision was like Pasadena on a smog alert day times ten, and my right eye vision was like an Alpine peak in the Sound of Music.   

The operation sounds much creepier than it actually is; you can go to YouTube to see some of the procedures.   They cut a small slit in the side of the cornea, pulverize the cloudy eye lens and suck it out with a tiny vacuum cleaner, and then slip in a new soft plastic lens that's rolled up and unfolds in the space formerly occupied by your bad lens. I was awake, though sedated, throughout the procedure, and walked out under my own power about 20 minutes after it was done.   

The doc says that for all of us it's not a matter of "if" we get cataracts, it's a matter of "when".   Do not fear the cure.   I'm amazed, delighted, and now I'll be able to see just how over the top colorful my past year's worth of sunbursts have been...

Glad to hear/see about your results, Rick. Now if the docs could only fix our hearing to the Alpine Peak standard...

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

You got that right Steve.I can`t hear squat.I wear a hearing aid in each ear to prove it,
            James

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

Rick,

Thanks for that report. I'll be facing cataract surgery soon. At last year's eye exam, the doc said that my eyesight had improved slightly...because of the cataracts that I was developing. My eyesights gotten much more blurry this year and I know I should have the surgery soon. Thanks for letting me know the positive results.

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GregH
Fot Wuth

Congratulations, Rick.  I bet Tasmania will look different, just like all of your finishes.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Glad that your feeling better Rick and thanks for the info too........

Just testing your new and improved vision buddy - congrats!!!

Glad you got your sight back Rick. I remember when my Grandmother had cataract surgery back in the 70's.What an ordeal it was then. She had to lay still with sandbags on each side of her head. And afterwards she still had to wear thick lenses to see. I think she was in the hospital for two weeks. It's amazing what they can do now.

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

Great post Rick! I just showed it to my wife. She's 29 and has somehow developed cataracts. She's extremely scared about the procedure. It helps her to hear stories like yours.

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nay

My blogs
Hand Made Gutar
Woodworker++

Good news, Rick. I'm really happy to hear your report on the procedure and results, too. I've got one lamp fading out on me.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

The surgery really is amazing, and the results are almost immediately noticeable.   First you see colors like you haven't in years, and then the clarity starts to come back.   I'd gotten to the point last week where I could not read a license plate at 20 feet with my bad eye, yet I could read one nicely at 40 feet with my new good eye.   The left got intensely jealous of the right!

Rick,
Congratulations on successful surgery. You are pretty young to need that.
I worked in that industry for several years designing lenses and surgical equipment used during the procedure. They still use my lens folding tool for foldable silicone lenses. That was a fun job. I got to train doctors on using the equipment.
Phaecoemulsification is a wonderful thing!    

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

Actually, I'm about the same age or a little older than both of my parents when they needed this.   I'm 63; I just act immature...   

This time I was hip to listening to the doc vacuuming out the remains of my lens. Luckily, that kind of stuff just fascinates me, and I was able to comment, much to the doc's surprise.     

Yes, I got the roll-up lenses. Thanks!   The amazing thing is that I'm now about 14 hours post surgery, and while my vision is not fully up to par in the eye they just did, it's actually better than it was yesterday with the old original bio-lens.   I look forward to getting back to work with fully restored vision; I now know it's been a year or more of trouble.

[QUOTE=Rick Turner] Actually, I'm about the same age or a little older than both of my parents when they needed this.   I'm 63; I just act immature.....[/QUOTE]
You want me to argue with you on that?   
I tell my kids that they can make me get old, but they can't make me grow up.   


[QUOTE=Rick Turner] This time I was hip to listening to the doc vacuuming out the remains of my lens. Luckily, that kind of stuff just fascinates me, and I was able to comment, much to the doc's surprise.....[/QUOTE]
I think that worries a lot of people - being awake during surgery. I worked on a ultrasound machine, I forget the frequency, but it sure makes a distinctive noise. Did you get a video of the procedure? Sometimes the old lens breaks free and the docs chase it around the eye. Us the U/S tip engages the broken bits of the old lens, it bounces and dances within the eye. The tip is hollow and is sucking out the pieces as they are broken up into sections small enough to go through the tip. That lens used to be so soft and flexible. It is where focusing was performed as muscles pulled on and compressed the lens to change shape. As we get older, the lens gets hard and the muscle can not shape the lens anymore. I've often wondered if there is a supplement that could stop it.
The cataracts are a clouding of the lens, that is different than the hardening. It is believed that both heredity and exposure to sunlight are the biggest culprits. Have you been outside a lot?


[QUOTE=Rick Turner] Yes, I got the roll-up lenses. Thanks![/QUOTE]

Did they put it in a plastic cartridge and push it through? I worked for the first company to do that back in the 80's. The polypropylene cartridge with that material's ability to have what is called a living hinge made it possible. The hinge is very thin - .003" and it was hard to get a molder to make a mold and run parts. The tip also gets very thin and the core pin can get off center causing some problems with the lens delivery. I remember being in surgery watching as the Dr. delivered the lens and then it split in 2 halves. That wasn't fun, but we fixed those kind of problems.

[QUOTE=Rick Turner] The amazing thing is that I'm now about 14 hours post surgery, and while my vision is not fully up to par in the eye they just did, it's actually better than it was yesterday [/QUOTE]

You are looking through a clear lens now. It is working fine from the start. The distortion/lack of clarity is your cornea healing. It takes a while for it to recover. You just had a 4-5 mm slit cut in it and it has lost its shape. It will come back soon enough.

Enjoy your new vision!

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

Great news Rick! Glad to hear you're seeing that much better. Nice to know that medical marvels are happening out there!

Now, I just wish they could do something about all these little microscopic critters floating around in my vision path. Darn floaters. I hate's 'em. It's like looking through eyeglasses with moving smudges on them.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Great news Rick, problem is when you look in the mirror now you'll see all the wrinkles!

Can be a life changing operation. My mother had her's done when well into her 80s and it gave her many more years of independence.

I support a charity called Sightsavers International, based in the UK, who literally transform the lives of people in the third world who suffer from cataract, tracoma or river blindness. Each year they help many 10s of thousands people with operations who otherwise would be be going progressively blind. Being blind in the US or Europe in one thing, being blind in Africa or the Indian sub-continent is a different matter. It's probably the most simple, cost effective, way of combatting poverty in these areas where eye problems are almost endemic.

Now you can see properly Rick better not look at those glue joints you thought were so tight

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

I know a guy who had both cataracts removed in the same day.  He went home, recovered, looked at his wife, and then got a divorce.....

The next time I saw him I asked him where he had been and he told me he had a cataract.  I told him that I prefer Lincoln Continentals.........

Steve, for me it was probably 90% heredity.   Until I can afford to build a shop with a roll-away roof, I'm a fairly indoor guy.

There are some videos of the whole procedure up on YouTube. Amazing stuff.   

Anyway, thank you and to all the technology folks behind modern medical miracles like this.

i had the surgery about 10 years ago. secondary cataracts came back a couple years ago. that is fixed with the laser , quick in and out deal. hows your vision at night? do lights have a hue around them? or are you getting these spots that move across your eye in the opposite direction in wich your looking? i was 19 when i had the surgery done. now you can lean back and post comments here

Cataract surgery is a piece o'cake these days. I've had both eyes done with lens implants AND detached retina surgery following both cataract surgeries. Detached retina is a risk after this surgery and I was fortunate to get correctable vision back to 20/20. Some don't make it back.

The lens implant is a fixed focus lens that the doc can have made for any focal length..reading range or whatever, but he does need to balance it with the "other" eye focus. This is something to chat with him about when you are discussing the operation.

My first surgery was done with needle anesthetics, but now they have eye drops which are way less painful..actually no painful!! The doc (and I had one of the world's best here in Eugene (Dr. Howard Fine) said that dreaded, "oops" word during my second surgery. Seemed he cut a bit deep and instead of the almost immediate recovery Rick mentioned, it was about six weeks worth of heeling...just like the old days. Things happen..they are cutting into your eyeball after all.

Yes, I had the major flare and corona effect with lights at night, and it got to the point where it was just not safe for me to drive at night.   Also my vision was like looking through dirty Visqueen or being in Pasadena on a bad summer smog day...with the smog compressed right in front of me. Now that it's been corrected, colors are incredible, and my visual acuity is better than I remember it being in years.   Yes, the lenses are fixed focal length...I chose not to go with the "trifocal" versions as the doc said that with those, while it may eliminate the need for glasses, my close vision would not be as good as it can be with fixed focal length lenses. Since I have absolutely no problem wearing glases for close work, he did lenses that are best for distance, and I'll get a new prescription for close work that corrects my astigmatism...which is a whole other issue. At any rate, my old glasses are working fine for me now for close work.

And Larry is right; it was a piece of cake with no pain whatsoever. I probably felt the needle stick of the IV more than anything else, and that was nothing.

Anyway, four days post second op, and I'm a happy camper.

Hmmmm, I have an inherited large cataract and slightly deformed left eye (pupil is pear shaped instead of round)- and have been told that any operation involving the procedure you have written here won't happen until I'm an old lady (because I might get cataracts then anyway, so leave well alone if the sight is OK)

Looks like something to look forward to!!

[QUOTE=Rick Turner]

And Larry is right; it was a piece of cake with no pain whatsoever. I probably felt the needle stick of the IV more than anything else, and that was nothing.

Anyway, four days post second op, and I'm a happy camper.[/QUOTE]
Rick, I'm glad you are back on the proverbial horse. Are you now a member of the "man, I wish I would have done that 5 years ago" club? My dad need his done badly but he's a big chicken.
I've actually had 4 cornea surgeries. (2 in each eye) The first two were a walk in the park but the second two were less than pleasant. All is well now but when you hear the surgeon use the words "eye trauma" is starts to get kind of scary.

    I used to make the tooling for interocular lenses! There's a lot to them! One of the more challenging aspects of tooling to get the profile right. They have to be very close. I think it makes this work so much more concerning because it goes in people's eyes.

Fascinatng actually!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Warning regarding implanted lenses that focus, e.g., Crystal lens. The lens is a smaller diameter than fixed lenses, to allow for support of the focusing mechanism. At night, when the pupils are dialated, the edges of the lens refract light and cause a flare that can be distracting while driving. If you drive a lot at night, you might want to stick with fixed lenses. Furthermore, the focusing lenses often do not focus as well as your young eyes did, and you may need reading glasses anyway.

[QUOTE=Sam Price] Hmmmm, I have an inherited large cataract and slightly deformed left eye (pupil is pear shaped instead of round)- and have been told that any operation involving the procedure you have written here won't happen until I'm an old lady (because I might get cataracts then anyway, so leave well alone if the sight is OK)

Looks like something to look forward to!! [/QUOTE]

The indication has diddly to do with age, or what the cataract looks like, and everything to do with loss of eyesight. If it can't be corrected to reasonable levels with glasses/contacts, its well worth doing.