Plastic Surgery Journeys

Description

PSJOURNEYS.com has a forum dedicated to not only plastic surgery, but also dental and eye care abroad. Here is a good article on one person’s experience with eye in Mexico. Crossing over to better vision After a lifetime of misalignment, man’s eyes in focus By Kristi L. Nelson (Contact) Retired pharmacist Edd Bissell, 67, had crossed eyes all his life and wore bulky prism lenses, right, in order to be able to see. Last month, Bissell learned about a surgery that could “uncross” his eyes. Now, after surgery, Bissell is seeing things in a new way. “I can’t believe how light my glasses (at left) are,” he said. WHAT IS STRABISMUS? * Strabismus is a condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other, usually because lack of coordination among muscles surrounding the eye prevents both eyes from focusing on the same point at the same time. It may prevent someone from seeing out of both eyes at the same time, affecting depth perception. Strabismus can be either a disorder of the brain coordinating the eyes or a disorder of one of more muscles and can affect just one eye, both eyes at the same time, or both eyes at different times. A person can be born with the condition, or it can result from trauma or some diseases. For his whole life, Edd Bissell’s vision has depended on his ability to control a little set of muscles around his eyes. The 67-year-old retired pharmacist has strabismus, or misalignment of his eyes. Born with it, Bissell - like many others with the condition - got used to controlling those muscles in his younger years by squinting. But as he aged, that grew harder and harder for him to do. Then Bissell’s eyes would appear crossed, and if he tried to use them both at the same time, he’d see double. “You can look at the back of my car and tell by the bumper that I have no depth perception,” Bissell said. “I either looked out of my right eye or my left eye. … Throw me a pair of keys, and I don’t know where it is. I have no conception of where it’s coming to. I might reach here, and it might hit me there.” For about 15 years, Bissell has worn “prism” lenses - big, thick curved lenses that draw his eyes together in the correct way, enabling them to focus. They’re a nonsurgical solution to milder cases of strabismus, said optometrist Gale Roberts of Tapp Optical Dispensary, who made Bissell’s prism glasses. “He surprised me when I first put them on him; he immediately liked it,” said Roberts, who said most patients need an adjustment period, and some don’t really like the glasses at all. “It was immediate,” Bissell said. “It was like snapping a finger.” But last spring, Bissell returned to Knoxville from Mexico, where he spends part of the year, unable to uncross his left eye, even with the help of the prisms. At any rate, Bissell was already wearing such thick prism lenses that it was unlikely he could support a thicker lens on the bridge of his nose. Not only was the crossed eye affecting his vision, but “it made me self-conscious,” he said. “Because somebody’s looking at you, and they don’t say anything, but you see them go … ‘His eye’s crossed.

Products & services

Similar companies nearby