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Eye Surgery Was ‘A Miracle’
Jerry Burnham of North Main St. in Randolph may be 60 years old, but lately he feels all the excitement of a little kid on Christmas morning. "It’s a miracle!" he says with delighted conviction of the recent eye surgery that has made a drastic and wonderful change in his life. "It’s opened up a whole new world. I can see things I’ve never seen before!" Born with severe eye problems, Burnham struggled with extremely limited vision for his entire life. He wore heavy glasses with thick "coke bottle" lenses, which made things difficult for him in school and later on as an adult, when he worked for Ethan Allen and then farmed in Randolph Center. He was able to drive a car, but only during the daytime. "I had problems seeing when I was working, but I wouldn’t give up," Burnham said this week, during a visit to the Herald office. "I was told 30 or 40 years ago that I would go completely blind, but I didn’t." The cataracts Burnham developed actually turned out to be a lucky break for him, since it was during surgery to remove them last month that Randolph eye surgeon Dr. Jack Singer was able to perform the lens implant procedure that his patient calls "miraculous." Dr. Singer explained that Burnham had a condition called high myopia, "which is basically a huge amount of nearsightedness. Normally a nearsighted person can see a few feet away without their glasses and then it gets blurry. However, a person with high myopia can only see about an inch or so in front of their face and then it's incredibly blurry so his visual world was very limited." Dr. Singer noted that the strong ‘coke bottle’ eyeglass lenses that corrected that type of vision may clear up the central focus, but they gave Burnham tunnel vision and made everything look much smaller. "When you correct this type of problem with lens implant surgery, then everything looks its normal size, so the patient’s vision with the implants is much sharper and he has a full field of vision, which he didn’t have before," Dr. Singer said. "Burnham also had cataracts and when we operate on them we replace the natural lens that has become cloudy with an implanted artificial lens that stays clear. The lens implants come in a whole range of powers just as contact lenses and eyeglasses do, and with very accurate measurements of the eye before surgery I can determine what prescription strength the lens would need to be to correct his entire amount of nearsightedness. "Eyes that are so nearsighted like he had would even make it very difficult for him to get contact lenses that were strong enough." The lens used in Burnham’s operation is called an accommodating lens implant, because it flexes in the eye to accommodate and focus at all distances, automatically working with the natural eye muscles. The surgery is done with no needles to numb the eye and no stitches are used. The eyes are numbed with a topical eye drop anesthetic and the incision is so small (only 1/10 of an inch) that it seals like a valve without stitches so patients can resume normal activities right away. "He noticed a huge improvement immediately, as soon as he sat up," Dr. Singer said. "It sometimes takes a few days for the vision to stabilize, but he saw so much better right away." Burnham can now see clearly to walk around and watch TV without glasses, and needs to use reading glasses only to read the newspaper. He noted happily that he can now do ordinary things that most people take for granted, like reading the print on the TV screen or on a sign or poster around town. "I tell people to watch it, because I’ve got x-ray vision now!" joked Burnham, adding, "But, I’m still in the habit of reaching of reaching for my glasses." This grandfather of six also noted that his two grown daughters, Jennifer of Randolph and Lisa of Windham, Maine, were "thrilled" with the results of his operation. "It’s a miracle!" Burnham reiterated. "It’s put new life into me!" ____________ |
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