Your Eyes: What You Need to Know

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A couple years ago I had cataract surgery. It was not a good experience for me. Although the surgery did correct my ability to see better, I had an allergic reaction to the eye drops and still have problems with my stomach because of that. However…I learned a lot from the experience. The ophthalmologist who examined my eyes did a thorough job. I told my son that she looked at my eyes every possible way except through the back of my head. I had no idea that it was going to take so long to examine my eyes. The diagnosis was, that I had cataracts on both eyes and the beginning of macular degeneration. And the remedy, for the cataracts, she told me, was cataract surgery. The macular degeneration was not correctible. My eyesight had changed drastically. I could read the smallest print with no reading glasses. She called this “second sight.” Caused by the cataracts. My problem was that I couldn’t see things at a distance, clearly. Everything seemed blurry and my eyes were super sensitive to sunlight and headlights at night. The retina is what is affected, she said, because the light rays cannot penetrate through the cataracts. When that happens the brain cannot interpret the signals as visual images correctly. The retina of the human eye contains about 120 million photoreceptors, which absorb light rays and convert them into electric signals. The retina is actually inverted and there has to be a certain distance between the lens of the eye and the photoreceptors to get a sharp image. I found this information very interesting. What a marvelous creation our eyes are, the way God designed them. Unfortunately, as we age, our eyes are one of the first things to be affected. I can drive again and I can see better and life goes on for now.