Having had cataract surgery almost two years ago, I can appreciate your concerns. In MHO, if needed, it's one of the best things going. I've always been farsighted and started wearing glasses for reading in my early twenties. By my forties I was wearing glasses full time. In my fifties, graduated to bifocals and trifocals in my sixties. In my early seventies, due to cataracts, complicated by diabetes, I could not pass the state driver's license optical exam with my left eye (fortunately Ohio requires 20/30 vision in only one eye).

Surgery on my left eye, followed three weeks later on the right eye, now gives me 20/25 and 20/30 vision. I still wear glasses for reading but a ten dollar pair from Wally-World work just fine. An added bonus is how much brighter the world now appears!

Rosie

PS I've also gotten the diabetes very well controlled.

R.

Cathy, and all the others feeling concerned about Cataracts and Surgery,

I work(ed) in the Healthcare Industry (pharmaceuticals, diagnostic tets, medical devices etc etc) for many years, and my then Company actually developed the artificial lenses to replace the original ones with when people developed cataracts.

I was living and working in Germany when my Mother, in her early 80s and living in England, told me she had a cataract in one eye, she had been to her GP (Primary Care Physician ? in American) who had remarked "What do you expect at your age?" and told her there was nothing that could be done about it. My Mummy used to read a lot so she was most upset, and when she told me the response from her doctor, I was angry, this lazy bitch was way out of date. So I checked with a colleague in the UK where Mum was living, and got all the relevent details about which hospital to be sent to and the names of the ophthalmic surgeons who knew how to do the lens replacement operation, rang this excuse for a doctor up and told her what she was going to do for my Mummy (viz. write a referral letter to the Surgeon at the hospital a mere short bus ride from where Mum lived) unless she wanted to be struck off!

She admitted not realising things had advanced so much and that this could be done! (What had she been reading the last ten years? I wondered!) Anyway, within a week Mum was in the hospital and having the replacement lens, made of Hyaluronic Acid (not a corrosive sort of thing, just chemically it was called an acid. Hyaluronic Acid is found in the combs of cockerals for example, it is a clear, transparent gel that these days is also injected into the joints to "keep them oiled" as it were, for those who suffer from certain kinds of arthritis.) A few days after the op Mum was allowed home and could start to learn to focus with her new eye lens, which worked just like the original one except it was totally clear. A few years later, she reported to me that the other eye was developing a fogginess just like the first one did. She had moved to another health district in England by this time, so I again checked for details with my friend in the UK Company, and arranged for her to have the second eye seen to. By now it was five years later, and they could do the op using laser surgery as a day surgery procedure, so she went home immediately after, this time. She was rapidly restored to full vision and happily reading away, within a week. She lived until she was 89 so it had made all the difference to her enjoying an active life.

The risks of anything going wrong are very slight, if you go to a properly trained surgeon who has regular experience of doing these ops. In the UK people do not have to pay for it them selves, it is paid for via the taxes everyone pays who is employed, and done via the National Health Service. In most European countries this is how we do such things, in the North American continent I believe you have other kinds of arrangements, but elderly, retired people I believe do get it done free or via their insurance.

Cataracts happen as people get older, because the lens of the eye is a fairly closed part of the body, and with time waste products from the metabolism that goes on in the lens gather and form a deposit in it that makes it foggy. Evolution never got around to developing an excretary mechanism for the lens, because people by then were supposed to have had their children and reared them before this happened to them so their biological function had been fulfilled, so they were supposed to die quietly after this. If it happens in younger people then various causes can be looked for - exposure to microwave radiation causes cataracts (so DONT PLAY WITH you microwave oven, follow the instructions and always shut the door of it before switching it on!), some industrial processes produce things that damage the eyes too - from working in a steel works or glass works, to spending too much time staring down a microscope. I am not sure but I believe there is some evidence implicating Television too.

I wish you all good eyesight and long and fullfilling lives,

Love to all,

Briar