Cataract Surgery

When was it I first heard about cataract eye surgery? The late fifties? The early sixties? I can’t remember. I do remember being horrified at the very idea. They cut the lens out of your eyeball then put an artificial lens into that same eyeball. I could not in my wildest dreams imagine letting someone cut on my eyeballs. And I heard that you had to stay awake for the entire operation. How could anyone possibly watch a scalpel coming toward the eye with intent to cut? Egads! That was over 40 years ago. This week I had not one, but two cataract surgeries. They were the least troublesome surgeries I ever had. There was no pain at all and there’s none today. Yes, I was awake, but I could not see a scalpel. All I could see was a light show somewhat like looking through a kaleidoscope at photos taken by the Hubble Telescope. Nothing to it. I do wonder how often first ideas horrify us, then later turn out to be routine? Jet airplanes, certainly. I remember my father telling me in the fifties that he would never ride on one of those new-fangled jets. They were okay for fighter pilots, maybe, but he wasn’t gonna ride one. Now we all ride them so routinely that we are tired of them and forget their many real benefits. In the sixties, no less a magazine than Fortune opined that business would not go for the new Lear. Now every airframe manufacturer that doesn’t produce a business jet has plans to do so in the very near future. In his later years, my father flew jet airliners all over the world, but refused to ride piston aircraft. I teased him about his fear of them in the fifties. He laughed and then made a great point. "Boy." he said, "I just didn’t want to be a guinea pig! Those jets weren’t yet as safe as they are today." The same is true of cataract surgery. The present always seems to be the norm. Anything truly new is way out in left field. Yet I am convinced that some day our grandchildren will sit around talking about the fact that we—you and I—used to ride around in airplanes that carried fuel tanks full of gasoline and/or jet fuel. I won't be around for it. If you are, just remember you read it here way back in the early part of this century. We'd love to post your comments. Please click the comment tab at the top.