"Cataract removal"

I got cataracts which were removed at Hampshire Foundation Trust Royal Hampshire County Hospital.

Both operations were a success and I am happy with the result. I especially valued the very sensible, unpatronising, conversations with the surgeons about what sort of sight I would like my new lenses to provide. It was fantastic to be able to have a choice about whether it was more important for me to have good long or short distance acuity.

One small change in how the operations are scheduled would be very helpful to people like me who have bad eyesight regardless of the cataract. I have always been very short-sighted and have astigmatism. If you need cataracts removed from both eyes, they put you on the waiting list for one eye and once that is operated on, you go back on the waiting list for your second eye.

So someone with poor sight like me ends up having around 3 months (depending on the length of the waiting list) in which you can't see properly! This sounds odd - this is why I couldn't see. Obviously, my spectacles were no longer right for my newly replaced eye. I tried taking the glass out of my spectacles for the eye that had been operated on, but it was impossible to co-ordinate vision between my old, short-sighted, eye with spectacles and my new, almost perfect eye without. In the end, I was still working and I couldn't cope with being unable to see. I had to go to the optician and make a big fuss and offer to pay for it myself in order to get new spectacles which would allow me to co-ordinate vision on both eyes and thus see for the approx 3 months wait for my second eye to be done.

I mentioned this problem to the consultant at the hospital who said that they understood that it was a problem, but that few people are as shortsighted as me so few people are affected.

They helpfully fitted me into a cancellation so I didn't have to wait as long as most people, but that makes no difference to my point. Which is that the scheduling system should accommodate people like me. They could easily have a rule which says that if your sight is worse than XXX you should have both cataracts replaced in as short a space of time as clinically possible. I don't think it's right that I had to sort this out myself by making a fuss and because I was well off and could pay for temporary spectacles. And if there aren't many of us, it wouldn't upset the system much.