An Eye for An Eye

I spent the first term at Grammar school straining to see the blackboard. I just couldn't read the writing and spent most of each lesson asking the people sat next to me what it said. At the point at which I was in danger of losing friends, or worse still being moved to the front of the class, I was diagnosed with myopia. A school eye test told me I was short sighted and horror of horrors I would have to wear spectacles.

Great pains were taken by both me and my mother to keep me out of NHS frames and a suitable sexy black framed pair were chosen. Very Joe 90 - this was 1969 after all.

The first morning I wore them at school, full of nerves and trepidation, I sat in registration holding my head high only for our form teacher, the redoubtably busty Miss Pjnder to say "Clayton, take those off and give them back to whoever they belong to and stop messing around" It took every ounce of gall and fortitude to puff up my medium chest(at the stage I was one of the shortest boys in the form) and say " They're mine Miss. I have to wear them" At least I was rewarded with a hint of a blush and my bespectacled life began.

It lasted until the first year of drama school where constantly taking glasses off for running around acting, and putting glasses on for eye contact acting made me persuade my mother to invest the huge sum of £100 (1975 now!) in a pair of soft contact lens. Cutting edge technology for their time, they had to be boiled in their container in salt water every Sunday afternoon and took three solutions each morning and evening to keep them useable. It didn't up my shaggability. It didn't up anything really. But glasses became a thing of the past.

Over the years I've lost more lenses than I care to think about. I've scratched my retina twice - more painful than words can say. I've had whole casts on stage after a show looking for a dropped lens and now it's all no more

In January I was diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes and it soon became clear that I would have to have surgery to remove them. Having reached the age of 53 with only a few days in hospital as a child with pneumonia, and never having undergone an operation, I have spent the last six weeks or so in a silent state of trepidation and worry.

I needn't have done so. I had surgery on my right eye last Wednesday morning and I've had more painful visits to the dentist. I set off to the hospital at 6.30 am, safe in the knowledge that whatever happened, Rich was coming to collect me later. By 7.30 I was sat having my first set of anaesthetic eye drops and wondering what was to come. By 8.40 I was meeting the anaesthetist and having my eye dealt with. ten minutes later I was on the table under a blue tent and chatting to the consultant who unbeknownst to me had already started removing the cataract and the lens from my eye and replacing it with a false clear one.

I was out of the theatre and being collected by Rich at 9.30am and back home to bacon sandwiches and a day of rest.

Since then it's been a regime of eye drops and eye shields at night, but I have a right eye that has brilliant eye sight and a whole world seems to have been opened to me. The reading is a bit wonky as my left eye won;t be done until probably July when my right eye has been approved, but I could have gone straight back in there and had it done there and then.

Thanks to all at Kings - Mr Hunter and his brilliant team. When you wade through the administrative nightmare that is the NHS, at its heart are some of the best practitioners in the world. Let's hope that the Condem Pact recognises this and if cuts are to be made,which undoubtedly they are, then its managers that go and not nursing staff.

Perhaps I ought to keep an eye on them!