BENGALURU: This 95-year-old man wanted to play with his grandchildren or go for walks with them. But he couldn’t as the vision in both his eyes was blurred due to the cataract and he was apprehensive about going in for surgery at his age. But after much persuasion by family and doctors, he underwent surgery recently. Today he is overjoyed that he could see and spend time with his grandchildren.
Dr Shalini Shetty, senior consultant, Ophthalmology, Apollo Hospital, Bannerghata Road, said, “A couple of weeks back as I was attending to my patients one after the other, when a man with winter-white hair walked up to me, beaming a toothless smile. He told me that he was ready to get the cataract removed.” “He said, ‘I want to read again, watch the television and play with my grandchildren. I want everything to be like before,’” the doctor said.
The grand old man, Harish (name changed), had an advanced stage of cataract. He had been deferring the surgery for the past 10 years simply because of the fear of complications that might follow. As days rolled by, his condition aggravated to a point that his blurred vision started affecting his well-being. It was then that he decided to undergo surgery.
Dr Shalini said, “Cataract is the clouding of an otherwise normal clear lens of your eye. For people having cataract, seeing through such a hazy lens is sort of looking through a fogged or frosty window. Hence, it poses huge difficulty in engaging in day-to-day activities. As you age, the lenses in your eyes become less flexible, less transparent and thicker causing the tissues to break down and clump together.”
In Harish, the cataract had developed in both his eyes and he could not even see a distance of 5 metres. Hence, it became imperative for him to undergo surgery. “A lot of them get scared that they will lose their entire vision as they are aging. But the fact is almost all cataract surgeries are easy to perform and are successful. We just administer drops and perform the surgery, unlike before where local anaesthesia was given. There is no age bar at all for the surgery,” said Dr Shalini.
Harish was fine in no time after the surgery and is now able to see perfectly. “I can’t thank the doctors enough. They assured me that I would be perfectly fine. I couldn’t think of undergoing surgery at this age, but they made it easy for me. I’m now able to watch cricket matches and play with my grandchildren,” he said.