Terry Prone: I should have got cataracts removed long ago, I see that now

Cataract surgery can be a real life-changer for anyone who has been coping with poor vision in later life.

You don’t want a South African poking you in the eye with a Sharpie two days after South Africa loses an international rugby match, but that’s what happened. A poke in the eye. With a Sharpie. 

OK, I didn’t check the brand of the marker, so it could have been an Edding felt tip, but it was a red marker, anyway. And he didn’t just poke it in my eye once, but twice. 

This seemed to be part of those protocols that prevent surgeons taking away the wrong leg or amputating the perfectly good arm and leaving the patient a tad hampered as a result.

I had ended up with the South African invading my eye after a couple of years of declining performance in both eyes. 

When laser surgery was new, I had it done in the US, both eyes, same day (to the dismay of my husband, who figured it was better to save one eye in case the other didn’t come well out of the surgery). 

Me, I couldn’t work up enough courage to have it done twice, so both eyes were attacked on the one day, and as he drove me home, I was peeping through holes in the goggles they’d put over my face and reading signs I wouldn’t have been able to even notice, prior to the surgery. 

It was a life-changer. 

I went from being legally blind with glasses as thick as doorsteps to being able to see everything without assistance of any kind. 

The glasses went to a charity that donates them to people overseas whose need might match them, and I learned not to be surprised when I saw myself in a mirror or a window, my face undefined by specs in the way it always had been, up to then.

But it fades, man, it fades. 

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Over time, trying to read small print dictated buying cheapo reading glasses in dollar shops in the US. No problem. But over more time, trying to read any print dictated buying reading glasses of increasing magnification power, sometimes at outrageous prices. 

When you’re about to get on a long-haul flight, and you realise you’ve forgotten to bring reading glasses, price becomes no object, as the concession-owners in Dublin Airport understand only too well. Cheap flight, expensive reading. 

Then you encounter the situation where you have three pairs of reading glasses in the car but are mid shop in the supermarket and determined not to buy yet another pair. 

So you use your phone’s camera app to find out if this particular brand of ice cream has a particular additive in it. Plus there’s the misplaced pride thing. You’d rather live on cat food than ask a passing stranger to read the ice cream label for you. (No, things never got so bad that I couldn’t tell the difference between ice cream and cat food. But close…) 

'Then you encounter the situation where you have three pairs of reading glasses in the car but are mid shop in the supermarket and determined not to buy yet another pair'. Picture: Denis Minihane

Now, I did attend an eye specialist based in a private hospital at six monthly intervals. Until last year, when they maddened me in two ways.

The first was by drawing me pictures. 

The second maddening thing was telling me I had cataracts, but they needed to ripen and sure I wouldn’t go blind. 

I wouldn’t go blind? This seemed to boil down to an instruction not to mind details on cat food/ice cream being inaccessible because as long as blindness wasn’t an immediate threat, all was well.

All was not well. Something had to be done. 

I thought I remembered the eye specialist on Pat Kenny’s programme rubbishing the notion of waiting for cataracts to mature like a good wine, and got an appointment with him. Arthur Cummings his name, South African his nationality. 

He said my cataracts were fine for removal and he suggested, in addition, slipping in two permanent lenses that would help remedy my astigmatism. Each lens would cost €500.

By this point, my eyesight was deteriorating so commitedly that I had already had to invest in reading glasses of higher magnification than you can buy over the counter in Ireland. 

Not to mention the fact that objects approaching were almost in my lap before I could figure out if they were a bus, an SUV or a golden retriever. When you find yourself doing deductive reasoning along the lines of “It must be a bus, it’s in the bus lane”, you are not going to baulk at lenses costing €1,000 a pair.

So I pitched up on the day, headachey and cross because of caffeine withdrawal. Normally by 9.30am I’d have laid waste to two massive beakers of strong coffee, but it was one of those nil-by-mouth jobs from 10 the previous night. Details were taken. Details were confirmed.

Drops put in the relevant eye, which ensured no reading was possible.

So I concentrated on eavesdropping. Anaesthetists clip-clopping into the prep room wearing wooden clogs and reassuring the hip replacement patient that they were going to take good care of her. 

And mysterious conversations between nurses like: “He’s taking the fifth before the second. Don’t ask.” 

I was handed hospital clothes to replace my own. 

A special place in hell is reserved for whoever designed the operating theatre gown and they should be joined by the one who came up with purple socks striped with rubbery bits.

And the one who developed paper night caps in turquoise so they can’t match the socks. Research should be done to work out if wardrobe humiliation of patients in some way makes them act less entitled, which we know the medical profession hate.

Then it was lights, camera, action, and a short term later, I was alert, eye bandaged, egging for coffee. 

Before surgery, the man with the marker had warned me that my long-distance vision should be markedly improved, but I would still need glasses for reading.

Here’s the reality: After the second eye was done, I can see your back teeth from here. Even when you have your mouth closed. 

I can see that swimmers on the beach below where I live are wearing bikinis (up to now, they looked like they were wearing mud togs).

I can see their tattoos. I can see a bright yellow diamond-shaped sign on the cliff where an arrow dives into waves (no idea what it’s warning against, but it’s vividly threatening). 

I’ve found out my home is protected by 24/7 security, having never been able to read the plaque before. 

I’ve discovered ravens play a game of reversing on to a telegraph wire despite their mothers probably telling them to always look where they were going. 

Then there’s the pattern inside the windscreen of my car, like ribbing. Who knew? Not only is everything clearer — everything’s brighter and more colourful, too, as if someone had turned lights on.

Best of all — perhaps to be filed under “Under-promise, over-deliver”, I can read without glasses. Cataract surgery and lens insertion is a miracle.