Cateract Operation
Hi All, I am about to have an cateract removed from my eye, has anyone had experience of this and how quickly can you get back into playing. Was reading an article by a sax playing eye surgon, he said about 2 week before playing sax but harps arnt blown as hard as sax's, are they ? TIA
Thanks for the information, was getting a little down if I had to stop for a week or two. was on a roll for my next LOA submission.
Hi Russell, I had cataract surgeries (both eyes) last year, and I was practicing the same night. No pain or anything. I was told to avoid heavy lifting for awhile, but otherwise no restrictions. So you probably don't want to lug heavy amps around or anything, but playing shouldn't be a problem.
The only issue for me was that there were several months between the two surgeries and then I had to wait a bit for the eyes to heal before I could get new glasses, so I had to be pretty close to read music/tabs.
As a comparison, I had more extensive eye surgeries (vitrectomies) about twenty years ago when I was in my late twenties (early-onset cataracts were in fact an expected side-effect of those) and I was on pretty heavy painkillers for several days and probably wouldn't have been able to practice if I had been playing at that point. But cataract surgery is nothing at all like that; as eye surgery goes it's about as gentle as it gets.
Had one eye done yesterday with no pain or irritation today. Only drawback has been me looking in the mirror this morning and seeing Keith Richards looking back. The improvement is quite miraculous really and im hoping seeing the music tabs better will help me concerntate better aiding progression. Thanks for taking the time to answer.
Hello Russel. I don't normally chime in on this part of the forum (I let the students chat here), but I happened to see your post and one of my private students is not only an ophthalmologist, but he had a lifetime of teaching ophthalmologist at Stanford University and has traveled to third world countries for many years doing field cataract surgeries where he would do many dozens of these a day. He says...
"Following cataract surgery, there are no restrictions on breathing or blowing. In my opinion it will be safe to play harmonica the day after having a a cataract removed."