Injury Repaired After 49 Years
Follett wrote on Usenet in 2002:
Fifty years ago, in 1952, at the age of 12, I was in the capable hands of a Mr Harold Ridley, an extremely kindly ophthalmic surgeon who saved my right eye following an accident that cost me my left eye. The lens had to removed (needled) to prevent infection spreading. His parting words to me all those years ago were: "Come back in 20-years and we might be able to put an artificial lens in your left eye." I went back in the 1960s and got much the same answer from Mr Ridley's successor: "Sorry -- not enough tissue to anchor a lens in place. Come back in 20 years." Last year my vision started clouding in my good eye so I hot-footed to London and got to see the one man who's been working near miracles at Moorfields. To my astonishment, he was prepared to tackle my defunct left eye on the grounds that it had been pretty useless for half a century therefore nothing would be lost if a lens implant operation went pear-shaped.He went on to say that they had had to place the lens in front of the pupil, but it worked, and the cataract in his right eye had also been repaired.
Read more about this topic: James Follett
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