I've been a left-eyed photographer for the last eighteen months. Just over two years ago, I was diagnosed with a cataract in my right eye, and last year with one in my left eye as well. The vision in my right eye became so poor that I had to switch over to holding the camera viewfinder to my left eye. Before the operation, the cloudiness in the cataract made it seem like I was walking around in fog. It became difficult to drive (even though my ophthalmologist assures me I was still legal) and my photography (not to mention blogging) pretty much came to a halt.

About 6 weeks ago, I had the first cataract removed and the lens in my right eye replaced with a synthetic version. At my recent 6 weeks assessment, the ophthalmologist assured me that the sight in that eye (the distance vision) is now actually better than normal. Wow! Of course, as the lens only focuses to distance, I'm going to have to wear glasses for reading and computer work, but that's no problem: I've been doing for years, in any case.

My second operation has just been scheduled for New Year's Eve, at the crack of dawn. Fingers firmly crossed!

It is quite hard switching back to my right eye for photography (now that my left eye has gone cloudy), and I've been very cautious (well ... paranoid) about straining my right eye. The net result is that I've done very little photography since my first op. Correspondingly, I think it will continue to be blogging-lite for the next couple of months.

Male bloggers of a certain age seem to be afflicted with cataracts. Robert X Cringely seems to have had a particularly awful time. He is the author of the excellent Accidental Empires, the early history of Silicon Valley, and the rise of the tech behemoths (and the transience of some of them): a highly recommended read. He is a great blogger too. He has my very best wishes. 

Mike Johnson on the Online Photographer has had more than one reference to cataracts. Most interestingly, one of his contributors said that his vision was not just sharper, but it was colour-corrected too. His cataracts had a yellow cast, so when corrected the colour balance appeared to be towards blue. I was expecting to see that, but didn't. In my case, the lack of fog made everything much contrastier.

Anyway, in my experience, having the cataract operation has made all the difference to my quality of life. The NHS has no shortage of critics, but my experience of our local NHS eye service has been outstanding.