\n
by Barbara Mende<\/p>\n
Despite COVID-19, I believe that life keeps getting better. When people talk about the good old days, I ask them whether they\u2019d have wanted to die of polio or measles or pneumonia. And whether they can imagine a pediatrician being forced to retire before she was 50 because of cataracts \u2013 as my mother did.<\/p>\n
Cataract surgery in the 1950s hadn\u2019t come far from what Jacques Daviel invented in 1748. At that time successful removal depended on the cataract being hardened enough to remove in one piece. Therefore patients were told to let it \u201cripen\u201d or get hard, which could take years after the first symptoms. When they finally had surgery, they had to lie still in bed for several days with sandbags around their heads. There were numerous attendant risks.<\/p>\n
My mother and six of her nine siblings developed cataracts in their 40s. While waiting for the ripening, she hid her condition for months, giving up her beloved needlepoint and novels, and asking me to read patients\u2019 charts and lunch menus and magazine articles to her. But the worst part was what happened after the surgery. Intraocular lens implants were still lab experiments, and contact lenses as we know them were in their infancy. Most cataract survivors wore what people called \u201ccoke-bottle glasses\u201d that magnified their eyes grotesquely. My mother managed to score a glass contact lens. But it was incredibly hard to manipulate, she couldn\u2019t drive at night with it \u2013 a career-ender in itself when pediatricians made house calls \u2013 and she wondered whether she could trust herself to identify a rash or a throat infection. So she gave up her practice. So did her brother, a dentist, who never adjusted to contact lenses.<\/p>\n
It was different in 1983 when I found I had the family\u2019s early cataracts. I wasn\u2019t worried, because I knew that Charles Kelman had invented a technique called phacoemulsification in 1967. The surgery was much less risky. You could have it at any time after the cataracts were discovered, and you only had to stay in the hospital overnight. Furthermore, implanting intraocular lenses at the time of surgery meant that you didn\u2019t have to bother with contacts or strange-looking glasses.<\/p>\n
At that time, though, I visited five doctors in Boston, and all of them were unwilling to perform the \u201cexperimental\u201d procedure that was only 16 years old. (There were in fact a few who did, but I didn\u2019t find them until later, and I looked pretty hard.) The fearful five all said I should wait six months to a year and then have the traditional procedure that my mother had undergone. \u201cWhat will my eyesight be like by then?\u201d I asked. One typical answer: \u201cOh, you won\u2019t be able to see much at all. But try wearing a hat with a brim and sitting by a lamp when you\u2019re watching TV.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since I had a career I loved and had to support myself, I didn\u2019t think that was me. \u201cWhy wait?\u201d I asked. \u201cFrankly, we\u2019re afraid of lawsuits,\u201d I was told, \u201cand we want to make sure the rewards outweigh the risks. But if you\u2019re in such a hurry, go see Charlie Kelman in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
I did, although I was warned against it. (One doctor said, \u201cYou realize how many lawyers and how many publicists he must have, to keep the lawsuits out of the papers?\u201d) Although Dr. Kelman\u2019s office occupied most of the 23d floor of the Empire State Building, he did his surgery in a small hospital near the end of Long Island which he\u2019d bought into with help from his royal Middle Eastern patients because Manhattan hospitals didn\u2019t want him to do \u201cexperimental\u201d procedures on their turf. He flew patients back and forth in the helicopter he\u2019d bought and learned to fly on a slow day.<\/p>\n
My surgery was uneventful, and I was driving the next day, but I had trouble getting follow-up care back in Boston: \u201cYou want us to clean up after that charlatan operated on you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to 2015, when my son found that he had early cataracts. Phacoemulsification was now the established procedure, and by then it was day surgery. When he scheduled it, I asked him whether he needed a ride and he said no, he\u2019d take a train. My second son, who had surgery last year, went back to work after the procedure.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we think about where the cataract gene came from. My grandmother was never affected, so we figured it came from my grandfather. But we\u2019ll never know because he died in 1913. In his forties. Of pneumonia.<\/p>\n
We in the 21st century have a lot to be thankful for.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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