I messed up my reply...
spendius wrote:
That's interesting contrex. I was premature too. 4 weeks. I have always put it down to being my head being bigger than average causing nervous tension for my mother.
Premature birth is not given as one of the causes of retinal detachment. Maybe it hasn't been researched.
Gordon Brown had detachments in both eyes as a teenager only one of which was fixed. And that after considerable trouble. I don't think the pressure bubble treatment was available in his youth.
With new techniques such as incubation and oxygen it was only after the war that very premature babies began to survive in reasonable numbers, I was born at 28 weeks, very small (just over 2 pounds) and in an incubator for several weeks. First they told my parents I wouldn't live, then that I was likely to live but was blind. They accepted this but when I was around 18 months my mother became convinced I could see. She was sure I was watching her as she moved around. My father thought this was nonsense, but she took me to the hospital and they confirmed that I did have sight in one eye, but very myopic indeed, and partial vision in the other. I had to wear the smallest NHS glasses available before I was even 2 years old.
It seems, in common with many such premature babies, I had a condition called retrolental fibroplasia (scar tissue behind the lens) which is now called Retinopathy Of Prematurity (ROP). There still is some controversy about the cause - excessive oxygen levels in the incubator, the strong lights common in neonatal wards in those days, some other factors maybe. The retina is among the last tissues to be formed in the womb and very premature babies are likely to have delicate eyes, it was discovered, as a result of babies like me.
In spite of this, I got on all right, I could read before I was 4 and have managed to drive a car and am a damn good shot with a rifle. I have no binocular vision at all; 3D stuff is wasted on me. The trouble is that the scar tissue means that the vitreous humour (the "jelly") in the eye is partially stuck to the retina and as the jelly normally contracts with age it starts to drag the retina off the back of the eyeball. This usually happens in late teens or early twenties so I did well to get to 48.
In the worst eye I had a total vitrectomy, a silicone rubber band stitched to the outside of the eye, (a "scleral buckle"), laser welding on both retinas, and the worst eye filled with saline and a gas bubble. I had to have four holes made in the white of each eye: one for a lamp, one for an "air gullotine" with rotating blades, one for a laser tipped welding probe, and one for a drainage tube to suck out the chopped up vitreous humour. The whole thing took 4 hours and I was under total anaesthetic. I had to lay on my back and have my head between 2 blocks and the surgeon operated through a binocular microscope.
It was the biggest operation I have ever had and I have so much admiration for the treatment I got. I had to have 3 months off work and one consequence was that my eyeballs changed shape. I had to throw away my glasses and get a new radically different prescription. The surgeon put it this way: I now had the eyes of a 20 year old and was not likely to live long enough to get the myopia that affects many old people (I'd have to be 120 years old)
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Thank you both so very much. I shall thoroughly enjoy this birthday now - might even have something a little stronger than tea today! 
