Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Asymmetric Cataract

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Whoever said:

"Two eyes are better than one"

didn't have asymmetric cataract.

It all started about five years back. I was merrily walking along the high street of my small town Gudur one night. The street lights were bright and attracted many insects. One of them hit my left eye making me to close it. I then found that I could only see hazily through my right eye, with about, say, 70% clarity.

When by and by I opened my left eye, all was fine. A few more trials of squinting, with women gazing suspiciously, I saw that the right eye was sort of playing truant.

I straight went to the chamber of the only eye-doctor who was swatting mosquitoes and thinking of shutting shop for the day.

I offered myself to him and asked him to just tell me if I have cataract in my right eye.

He shone his torch light (which needed periodic blows from behind) here and there and announced that I had no cataract as far as he could see...which was not very far. I asked him how much is his fees and he felt shy and asked me to have a sight-test. I said ok; and after making me read the chart (which I had memorized by then) he gave me a prescription (
which I dumped) and took Rs 30 (thirty only).

Returning to Hyderabad, my wife asked me what is wrong with me...why I was always closing one eye and then the other every once in a while looking at her lovely figure. I then told her what happened at Gudur, and she drove me to the nearest eye-specialist in Ameerpet. By then the haziness in the right eye had increased to about 50%.

When I went into his chamber, he was reading the stocks and shares pages of DC. When I told him that I am a retired Professor of IIT (to impress him), he replied that he too is retired Professor of Ophthalmology from Osmania Medical College (to impress me). I then asked him to just tell me if I have cataract in the right eye.

He had a better 'scope' than the Gudur torch light and he shone it in my eyes repeatedly asking me to close one and open the other and look left, right, front, up and down and pronounced that I had no cataract. I asked him why the hell my right eye is hazy. He replied that I just have 'senile vision impairment' and asked me to take Vitamn tablets.

But he was too shy to charge me anything...us Retired Professors stick together.

I pushed a Rs 100 Note in his pocket and he was glad.

Within another year, the sight in the right eye was making its presence (or absence?) cruelly...I was always squinting and testing, and it became a nasty habit, troubling every onlooker.

And I couldn't read PGW anymore...that was when I started blogging...which doesn't require sight other than that of the inner eye.

My son drove me to the best corporate clinic, where the ma'am examined my eyes with a hi-tech compu-thing and declared that I have cataract in both eyes, one 80% and the other 20%. And she advised that I get both of them surgically corrected at once before I go as blind like a bat @ Rs 30,000 for each separately and @ Rs 50,000 as a package deal.

My son was almost swiping his credit card, when I kicked him on his shin and her on her feet and ran like a bat out of hell.

My son caught up with me after a chase of 200 meters and asked me what happened.

I replied that I am not going to entrust my eyes to a ma'am in overalls that is as outspoken as her. And I will get any surgery done only after one of them goes 100% blind...no risk then, except painful infection.

It is now two years and I discovered by myself that there is what is called Ctrl+++++++

Happy as ever...

What is the trouble now?

Any asymmetry in binocular vision is magical. With the left eye open and the right closed, I can read fine print on the medicine bottles. But with both eyes open, I just can't even read the headlines of ToI.

I can only term it as 'ophthalmic interference'.

It is like trying to drive a car with the right wheels punctured but the left ok. It pulls.

But who wants to read at this age when one can write famously?


...Posted by Ishani



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