Eye Surgery

News Shopper said:

Had it done in 2005 and still seeing fine since, although admittedly trying to see the shirt numbers on players' backs during night games can be a bit of a strain sometimes seven years on. I would recommend it strongly.

Ah ha....that would account for some of the bizarre comments you come up with in your night games reports!

CharltonKerry said:

Golfaddict, you might know the following but if you dont hopefully you'll find it interesting: what you got is very rare, unfortunately it's runs in our family and we all have to have regular check ups, three of our family has been badly affected and 2 have had to have total retinal transplant one of which was a double transplant, the first was one of the first ever carried out in this country all has been 100% successful and all have ended up with near perfect eyesight although rather unusual they have different coloured eyes! Whilst the soft contact lenses can and do work they sometime become impractical if the conditions worsens and then retinal transplants become an option. At least you have been given the correct advice NOT to have laser surgery. It's only been in the last 10 years or so that this has been recognised and that people have started to look out for it (sorry no pun intended).

Hope all goes well and keep having regular check ups, would suggest that you do what we do and get everyone checked regularly, as an example my kids are checked once a year from the age of 4, before our family came along you would be told that it was not hereditary unfortunately we proved can be, and also that it's misses generations which makes it hard to pin down. Don't know what the figure is now but it was only 1 in million people who suffered with it about 15 years ago.

Hope this is useful for you as certainly when the diagnosis was made within our family around 15 years ago nothing was out there and very little information was available to such an extent that we had to tell the opticians about it, it's got a lot better now and people are now looking for it, hence the increase in cases.

Regards
Kerry

many thanks Kerry - thats been a great help.

delroofer said:

My wife and I had lazer surgery at Ultralase a few years ago and would certainly recommend it (and them) to anybody considering it. I went from glasses to contact lenses to allow me to play football when younger, but was struggling with poor vision when swimming on holiday as lenses don't work. I also liked the idea of waking up in the morning without the need for the whole contact lens procedure. My only regret was having to give up my perfect reading vision after the surgery and now needing reading glasses when I didn't need them before. There is also a lifetime care guarantee with Ultralase.

 Thinking of getting it done. But needing glasses after forking out £4k has put me off slightly??

How's that work?

Had lens replacement surgery I was to old for laser treatment, best thing I ever did. 3k an eye, did it while you wait too! 

I had mine done at Moorfields in December and went back last week for the follow up consultation .
Lasik surgery i think it was
I  was 50 when i had it done and he said its a bit older than theyd usually do .
I couldnt get on with wearing glasses playing sport , cricket and tennis and contact lenses i couldnt get the hang of so went the lazy route .

The procedure was simple and a couple of months of drops etc

when i first started to look i could see my phone without glasses and i was told i had 20-20 vision the day after but that's not that great imo
my night vision whilst driving was not great ,with night lights coming towards me , i'd see a big lorry or was it a bus or car or cyclist,  oh no its just a fucking house and that has improved over time but it's nowhere near as great as i'd hoped the improvement would be after my initial few days of being back out amongst the seeing.
I'm happy with the procedure but my hopes were prolly higher than what turned out 
The surgeon is very happy with how it's gone and said I'll get 5-10 years without needing glasses .
Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night i struggle to read my ipad straight away but he said that's down to lighting .

I'd say 7.5/10 and if i could turn back time i'd still do it but i was hoping for a 9 and probably the impossible .

With my eyesight i had one eye made stronger for close up stuff and one made stronger for far away and apparently as time goes on the brain learns to deal with this .

I am in my 70's and had worn glasses for severe short sight since I was 4. In 2019 I had cataracts removed and, as part of the procedure, had lenses put into both eyes. I was told it would be a month or so before my eyesight settled down. I asked what to do about new specs and was surprised to be told I wouldn't need them except possibly for reading. It's been amazing; just as they said, I no longer wear glasses except for reading. A big thanks to the NHS. 

PragueAddick said:

I was a bit shocked to discover that I have a cataract in my right eye which is quite mature, and is the reason why I had been struggling with my sight in last few months. I'm "only" 68, but there we are, overall I've been lucky with my health so I guess I was due something.

I'm going to visit the clinic on Tuesday to discuss it, although I am fairly sure that I should have it done asap. The opthalmologist assured me that its 20 minutes, isnt painful with local anaest.,  (although I have heard the preparation part is more unpleasant than the op), and she seemed fairly sure it would be the right decision. Are there any other questions I should ask the clinic? Apparently I also have one in the left eye, but this is far less developed and my eye test readings for the left were more or less the same as 8 years ago, so I would feel I should wait and see how it goes with the operation for the right eye. Currently I wear varifocal glasses, having progressed to them from reading glasses eight years ago.

All thoughts, advice,. experiences, welcome!

Me too. I'm 66, and during a recent eye test the optician discovered 'early stage' cataracts in both eyes. It's a massively common procedure which can greatly improve your vision, so I'll go for it when they advise me to. It's not supposed to be that painful, more uncomfortable, I believe.
I've only been wearing glasses for about three months, but it means I can now identify players up the other end of the pitch (I'm in the Covered End Upper)!
It's also greatly improved my cinema experience.

My Mum and a friend had surgery. One eye at time best and let it recover. If my mum can go through with it you will be fine!!!

ross1 said:

I had eye surgery on both cataracts about 20 years ago, it was on private medicine and I had the lenses Lasered out and plastic lenses inserted. The operations were about three months apart. Upto then I had to wear glasses all the time, now I do not wear glasses and my eyesight at the age of 77 is better than when I was a teenager. There was no pain. I would recommend this to anyone if you have the same procedure that I had 

Another shout for this, although I didn’t have cataract issues I went to have laser treatment as working with the dogs and wearing glasses for a failing eyesight didn’t work to well and was costly after breaking several pairs.
I was told laser treatment wasn’t an option and went for the lens replacement and lve never regretted it, I think I paid around 3 k per eye and eight years in still perfect vision. 

golfaddick said:

I have an astigmatism (keritoconus) which has only just been diagnosed & I have been told that corective eye surgery is not possible. Instead I have had to change from soft contact lenses (which I have been wearing for over 25 years) to gas permeable ones. My eyesight is a lot better but the new lenses are a bugger. I have also been told that glasses are no good and the new lenses are the only things that will correct my "condition"

Haven’t met anyone before with keratoconus. As you probably know it’s quite rare. I was diagnosed in 1990 and had cornea graft in 1991. Roll forward to 2022 and I’m still putting drops in every day and attending east grinstead every 6months. I’ve now exceeded the expected lifetime of the graft.

Bigfatpete said:

golfaddick said:

I have an astigmatism (keritoconus) which has only just been diagnosed & I have been told that corective eye surgery is not possible. Instead I have had to change from soft contact lenses (which I have been wearing for over 25 years) to gas permeable ones. My eyesight is a lot better but the new lenses are a bugger. I have also been told that glasses are no good and the new lenses are the only things that will correct my "condition"

Haven’t met anyone before with keratoconus. As you probably know it’s quite rare. I was diagnosed in 1990 and had cornea graft in 1991. Roll forward to 2022 and I’m still putting drops in every day and attending east grinstead every 6months. I’ve now exceeded the expected lifetime of the graft.

Keratoconus runs through our family (even so it’s not meant to be hereditary). My middle brother and his daughter, plus my cousin all had cornea most double grants, my great ban was blind and they reckon it was also because of Keratconus. Before you snd golfaddick I had never heard of anyone outside our family that had this disorder, we all have to our eyes tested for this regularly and are (probably 10 years ago) where it’s has been found to run through the family, but what is surprising not all of us have it (although we are constantly monitored) and it appears to skip a generation.

I wrote on this thread 10 years ago about my laser surgery for shortsight. That surgery was 22 years ago now. I think my eyesight was fine for about 15 years but then deteriorated back to shortsight, although not as bad as before the surgery. I therefore had to revert glasses/lenses. Recently, however, my short sight has improved and I now only need glasses for reading (although I do wear varifocals so my sight is improved all round). My interest in this thread, now though, is regarding kerataconus, as my son has it. He has a contact lens but finds it very uncomfortable, so I'm interested in the scouse glasses. Will get him to do some research. 

Mine had that too, 3 or 4 years ago. He's 27 now and his only issue really us that he finds his contact lens very uncomfortable, but needs to wear it particularly when driving at night, otherwise all lights are blurred.

My mother had both eyes done for cataracts 3 years ago. One notable side affect, is while previously she was short sighted (i.e. had to wear glasses to see distant items), the new lenses gave her really good distance viewing, but meant she had to use reading glasses for the first time

She also had a common issue afterwards, where the lenses slightly frosted over after the operation. There was a wait to get it done on the NHS, but this just required a simple laser treatment taking 10 minutes.

Thanks for all the comments. I'm much reassured by what's been said about the cataract op, and it looks like the main decision will be whether to have the left one done at the same time; I tend to think not yet, per @HardyAddick,  as it is not much developed, but I will see what the surgeon recommends. Great to see that the thread has also helped bring together people with less common issues. It's another example of how great CL can be.