World's Greatest Lens

[Dusty]

No doubt about it, the best lens in the world wasn't made by CZ, Sony, Hassy, Nikon or Canon.

It's a Tecnis 1 Aspheric IOL. The focal length is custom made to my eye and because of it I now have sight restored in my right eye!

I'll have to change my photo here, I guess. Still too soon to take pictures with the right eye, but I'm hopeful that someday soon I can do that again.

After over 3 years, it feels good to see with 2 eyes again!

Dusty

[KevinBarrett]

I can't find this lens on Dyxum, are you sure it comes in Alpha mount or are you using an adapter?

Seriously though, congratulations! I can't image what those three years must have felt like without depth perception. May I ask how your old lens was damaged?

[Greg Beetham]

Sheesh Dusty you might be just about able to see in the dark with that new eye, after the sensitivity gain of not using it for so long.
Greg
ps. What happened originally, a work accident of some sort?

[David Kilpatrick]

Great news for you! I would be interested to know where they fixed the focus for you - 3m, infinity, reading or whatever. I guess that you will need varifocal specs, or a couple of pairs of specs, for all tasks. 3D will be what you really get back. Even if they got the focal length a tiny bit wrong, after about 20 days your brain will correct everything so it doesn't matter. I guess at first you will have to overcome some odd effects and be prepared to combat a few vision-induced headaches!

David

[bossel]

Congrats - Certainly a most important lens you got!!

[stevecim]

Congrats, Dusty

[Birma]

Great news Dusty - I hope the initial period of getting used to it goes well. I can hear the Six Million Dollar Man theme tune in my mind as I type . I think a Steve Austin avatar would be one idea!

[Greg Beetham]

Dang! I think it might be an APO as well, have a look here.
Greg

http://www.tecnisiol.com/materials.htm

[Dusty]

Thank you all. The eye story is nothing special. I found out from the Doc that "it just happens", no family/heredity links or such causes.

One day I got a spot in my eye, lower left corner. I though it was just dirt on my contact, but couldn't wash it off. Then it kept creeping upwards at an angle towards the upper right. I thought it was nothing special, probably just a popped blood vessel that would clear up in a bit. That was on a Friday, and we went to visit my Dad for the weekend. Since the black was now over 3/4 of my eye, the wife drove.

It didn't get any better, and Sunday I saw a Dr. friend at Church. He told me he's not an eye specialist,and that I should see one as soon as I got home. That night, a Dr. friend from home calls me for a favor. I ask him if he knows a good eye specialist and he gives me a name of the best guy in St. Louis, as well as the name of a "Doc-in-the-box" that will be cheaper then an emergency room, (no insurance) since you can't see an eye specialist w/o a long wait or another Doc saying it's an emergency.

I get sent to an eye specialist who tells me I have a torn and detached retina. He doesn't do that surgery, so he sends me to another, who just happens to be the guy my local Dr. friend said was the best. He looks at it and tells me to show up at the hospital at 8am to get it fixed.

The gory details - The Vitreous Fluid in your eye is thick, gooey, and attached to your retina. If you ever have "floaters" - little black spots that look like bugs or germs running across your eye - those are hard spots in the fluid. Some of them have sharp edges, and when your unlucky enough they cut the retina and let fluid leak in behind the tear, detaching the retina further.

To correct this, they suck out the fluid, blow your eye up with compressed nitrogen like a balloon to seat the retina and laser down the tear to repair it. Then you eye has to slowly fill with fluid, you can't do anything strenuous, fly, dive or change altitudes until it re-fills in about 3 months. On top of this, the retina repair will cause a cataract to form, so as soon as you can start to see, it starts looking like someone installed a bathroom window (wavy obscured glass) on your eye! Oh JOY!

As soon as I got my retina fixed, I got a job where I had to fly 3 weeks+ out of a month, so I couldn't get anything done that would take the food from my kids mouth, so I just became "Patch" for a while. My Avatar pic was taken at the Garden of the Gods, in Colorado looking towards Pike's Peak on one of those trips. Some of my old co-workers have never seen me with 2 eyes!

As of now, 5 days after surgery, I'm about 20/40 or 20/30 in the right eye, but I still see everything squiggly as a result of the tear. It's supposed to get better (already has) and go away after about 2 years. Text looks like an internet captha and is a bit tough to read. Otherwise, I can recognize people and have full color range.

Dusty

[Chris Malcolm]

Can you get accessories for it? Having macro and telephoto extensions would be fun!

[Greg Beetham]

Kaf Kaf...I'm getting past the sucking the fluid out of your eyeball part, but what happens too the nitrogen, where does that go?
Greg

[KevinBarrett]

Getting past it already?

http://www.tecnisiol.com/video11.htm

[Dusty]

Kaf Kaf...I'm getting past the sucking the fluid out of your eyeball part, but what happens too the nitrogen, where does that go?
Greg

As you body re-makes the Vitreous Fluid, it slowly displaces the nitrogen. They keep close track of it for a while as they don't want any explosions or collapses!

Dusty

[bakubo]

I occasionally check out this Vancouver area guy's blog and coincidentally he recently wrote about what sounds like exactly the same eye problem.

http://www.camerahobby.com

See the June 24, 2009 and June 29, 2009 entries in his blog for what he said:

http://www.camerahobby.com/Update-Archives2009.html

I am glad you are fixed up now. You may end up being able to see better out of the fixed eye than the old one now. I met a California guy in his early 60s in Chiang-Mai, Thailand who was living there and he had recently had lens replacement surgery in Thailand to put a Crystalens in each eye, mostly because of presbyopia. He said he had been wearing eyeglasses since he was about 10 years old that had gotten thicker and thicker over the years. Now he could see perfectly, near and far. It was amazing how he could easily read very small type that I showed him that even with my reading glasses I was not seeing perfectly clearly. In the last few years I have had presbyopia too so need reading glasses. The only time it really annoys me though is using the camera. I have to put the glasses on to look at the LCD, check histogram, etc. When I am shooting I don't have free hands so having to often put on the glasses to check something on the LCD and then take them off to shoot and then back again slows things down a lot.

[Dr. Harout]

Dusty, I am really happy for you.
Don't forget that lens pen