Not so long ago, it was not at all unusual to see blind individuals strolling the streets tap-tapping away with their white sticks, being guided by a dog, usually a Labrador, but I have not seen anyone like that in Britain for years, as far as I recall.

That has to be a good thing; it must mean that we are starting to cure or at least assuage most kinds of blindness.

My aunty had cataracts for years when I was a kid in the Sixties – it was simply one of those things. Some individuals got them when they were old and others did not.

My brother’s mother-in-law had cataracts in the late Nineties and she was enrolled on a two year waiting, but at least she had hope and they were going to be removed free of charge.

I do not know of anyone else that has eye trouble except myself. I could not get my glasses clean one day and then a friend said he saw a white dot in one eye. He took me to the hospital and the optician diagnosed ‘premature senile cataracts’.

Well, I live in Thailand now and he did not use those precise words. He told me that the cataracts were because I was prematurely senile.

I asked him if that was what he actually intended; he looked it up in a book and we both had a hearty laugh about it, although he never actually corrected himself. My condition turned out to be a little bit worse than just cataracts, but when I went from the local hospital to a major hospital in Pattaya, the surgeon saw me within 30 minutes and asked me if I wanted them removed.

I said that I did and she was willing to do the operation there and then. I got it delayed by 24 hours, but she would have sorted my eye out that day in a 30 minute operation, which does not need anaesthetic. I think that that was marvelous.

We have come a long way from routinely seeing blind people on the street and putting up with cataracts through a two-year waiting list to immediate removal of cataracts by laser surgery in 40-50 years.

At least we have in the West and in the East as well, if you have the money. There are still millions of people in Asia and especially in Africa suffering blindness and partial blindness for the sake of a simple 30 minute operation.

Two weeks after my surgery, my other eye began to cloud over. It was as if it had been holding on with its last scrap of strength until I got his mate sorted out. I had that one done last year and once I was permitted to remove my patch and look around me with two decent eyes again for the first time in a decade, I could not believe that I had forgotten how bright the world actually is and that I had not noticed how dingy my world had gotten.

If you are worried about an eye operation, do not be. What you will experience when you can see properly again will make all the worry seem ludicrous and if you get the opportunity to give someone their eyesight back, please do it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with macular degeneration glasses. If you want to know more, please visit our site at Macular Degenerative Disease