With apologies to Stanley Kubrick …
Quite a while back now, a number of years in fact, I was notified that I had macular disease in my right eye. Now as you may know, macular means that bits of the eye are not “seeing”, like looking through a piece of Swiss cheese where the holes are what you see and the rest is what you can’t.
There is no remedy or cure for macular disease at this point (major bummer), but thankfully in my case, it has not progressed any further, but still, effectively, as my ophthalmologist tells me, I have monocular vision as my right eye is pretty useless.
This leads me onto a related subject which is cataracts, and I found out a few months back I also have those, but in both eyes. Double bummer.
Now I hear you ask, what the Daffy Duck has this to do with video or photography and why should I care?
Well, believe it or not, it has everything to do with these subjects, and if you bear with me and read on, I’ll explain as succinctly and quickly as I can.
The best way to explain a cataract, and again I’ll use my ophthalmologist’s words, it is as if you are looking through the dirty windscreen of a car. But unless you are aware you have cataracts, you simply don’t realise it. Consequently, you are not seeing the full picture so to speak.
The fix is quite easy, and actually very clever. Under local anaesthetic, the lens of the eye is replaced with a synthetic one. The clever bit is that they can sculpt the new lens to match any prescription you may need or had via wearing glasses.
And the whole op takes under 10 minutes. I had my left eye (my good non-macular one) done earlier this week, and the paperwork you need to go through to have an operation in a hospital took ten times that to complete!
You need to keep a guard over the eye for around 24 hours after the op, but after that, it can be removed and you can use that eye fully. Sure, you need specialist eye drops every 4 hours for a few weeks, and initially at least, glare is an issue but …
(And this is where the video and photography and video angle come into play)
After removing the guard and walking outside, my first words were something like “The trees… they are so GREEN! And the sky is so BLUE!
Having cataracts completely stuffs up your perception of colour, and this simple operation reverses this situation and brings the world back to what it should be. And of course, when involved in photography and video, colour is somewhat important!
In short, the results are bloody incredible!
I should also mention that getting cataracts fixed can be done on the national public health system or whatever it is called and therefore there is a waiting list. Mine was 6 months (I get the right eye done a month later early in February). I assume if you have health insurance, you can jump that queue quite dramatically.
Any visit to a standard optometrist (I used Specsavers) which is also free via bulk billing, will let you know if you do have cataracts, and they will refer you to the ophthalmologist (that bit does cost, around $300 with Medicare covering about 1/3rd off memory, but again I assume health insurance will cover that). The ophthalmologist will organise the hospital visit and the surgeon.
I was reticent and nervous at first as having anything to do with my eyes gives me the shivers, But as I say, the whole thing is utterly painless, and over and done within minutes. You even get a cup of tea and a sandwich after.
And the results are simply breathtaking. Nor do I need to wear glasses all the time anymore.
That’s another win.