New Eyes For Old

I'm sitting at my computer in Bangkok today. Two days ago I had my eyes replaced. And last night I read a menu at the local restaurant that Cassie couldn't read.

I'm excited. Very excited.

Some years ago I took a look at Laser Eye Surgery. I’m not exactly blessed with good eyes and all this computer work certainly hasn’t helped. Over the years, Steve Brady, my eye specialist has given me increasingly discouraging reports on my eye health, to the point a couple of months ago where he showed my eyes on his new super imaging equipment as pre-cataract. The lens in both eyes were clouding over, so getting an ever more powerful set of specs was not really going to help.

Steve has been a real trusted advisor for all of the time I’ve been seeing him, and he is not about to recommend anything he doesn’t personally approve of. In the past he warned me of the dangers of Laser Eye Surgery, and as a result I found a very disturbing website of stories from people whose laser treated eyes had not delivered and had in fact caused all sort of insoluble additional problems. So when he suggested that I replace my lenses with intra-ocular lenses using a process called phaeco-placation, I listened.

The process involves cutting a small hole in the side of the eye about the size of a ballpoint pen. Through this hole the specialist inserts a tube to DISSOLVE my old natural lens, and then inserts a new manufactured, optically correct, UV light stabilized acrylic lens. And here’s the most amazing part; as long as your astigmatism isn’t seriously advanced, (mine wasn’t) you can have a multifocal lens.

For those of you unfamiliar with the advantages of multifocal glasses, allow me to explain. A multifocal lens has different (but graduated) areas with different optics to cater for shortcomings in both your long and short sightedness.

And because it’s graduated, you can, as I have for many years, wear the same glasses to look at the computer as you use to watch whales. This is the sort of glasses I've been wearing for years. But.. being a male, I also make a habit of sitting on glasses, so it's been a rather expensive exercise.

Now just imagine the design work in incorporating the same degree of precise optical perfection into a lens that is flexible and implanted into the eye. That's just so amazing!

So.. Cassie found the Thai Eye Clinic on the Net. It may be scary to some of you to find medical services in other countries, but if you have someone like Cassie who is a terrier of a researcher, then rest assured the info you need is there.. as long as you can find it. It turns out that the doctor who performed my op. had performed the same op. on the King of Thailand, so we figured he must be OK.. he's still alive.

The big difference you need to get used to in Thai medicine is the service. It's fantastic! The Thai people are naturally gentle and considerate so a health services industry in Thailand is a match made in Heaven. You would simply not believe the efficiency, the courtesy and the care given. I have never seen it in our overworked understaffed accountant-driven medical establishment in Australia!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I had my tests one day in the space of 30 minutes, the next day I was in theatre, and the next day I returned for the operation on my second eye. Apart from a bout of primal terror causing me to grip the operating table like a liferaft from the Titanic , there was NO pain, and the operation was over in half an hour. Sight was fuzzy for a day, but here I am, reading, seeing, enjoying, taking long, long looks at my beautiful partner... thank you Thailand!

What's that you asked? The price? 69,000 Thai Bhat per eye. At current rates, that's AU$2300.