My eyes are a little sore today. My right eye is still recovering from last week's cataract operation, and I've just had a retinal examination of my left eye.  Usually eye doctors use something called a binocular indirect ophthalmoscope for routine retinal check-ups. They wear that on their head and there is no direct contact with the eye. But as I had reported some flashing of light in the left eye in recent weeks, my eye surgeon used the the type of ophthalmoscope that incorporates a slit lamp, and inserted a large contact lens into the eye after placing anesthetising drops on the cornea. I believe this enables the doctor to see much more detail that with the ophthalmoscope that they wear on the head.

Even though the cornea is numbed, it's still a very uncomfortable procedure, and the doctor kept apologising for the "torture". But he could find no problems with the retina, and surmised that the flashing could be due to scar tissue around the buckle that was stitched into my eye when I had my detached retina back in 2003.

I'd had a retinal check-up in Manila a few weeks ago, but the doctor there only used the ophthalmoscope that they wear on the head, and he didn't even turn the lights off in the room, so I didn't feel it was a very thorough examination. So having a second opinion from my Australian eye surgeon was very reassuring.

After two rounds of surgery for a detached retina and two cataract operations, I now have great vision and better than 20/20 in both eyes. So I hope that will be the end of my detached retina story because it's been a long haul over a period of 14 years getting my eyes fixed.

The cataracts were a direct result of all the surgery previously done on my eyes, and I still have to put eye drops in them every day to control the ongoing glaucoma (another consequence of the surgery) but hopefully what I have now should serve me well for the rest of my days.