Lasering my left eye

My left eye is better than the right. Since having a detached retina at sixteen, my right eye has always been pretty useless. Then there were those cataracts last year, which threw things out of balance and both eyes were abysmal. The operations were a success and I had lovely clear vison for a while, or at least as clear as I'm going to get with retinitis pigmentosa.

Just before Christmas my vision was clouding: this happens sometimes. It isn't the new lenses, but the old lens sacs that turn opaque. This can be rectified by laser treatment. There is, however, a small risk of irreparably damaging the eye with the laser. The doctors were very reluctant to do my left eye as the treatment could bugger it up entirely and I'd be reliant on the pretty useless right eye.

Lately though, it's been really getting me down. I can no longer read normal print, not fluently anyway. Two pages of a book will take ten minutes and I feel sick afterwards. Not worth the hassle. And I love to read. It's an escape. I know there are alternatives such as reading on a VDU or with magnifying equipment, but they lack -- for me anyway -- the relaxing, tactile quality of lounging in a chair with a great book.

So I'm taking the risk. I've made an appointment mid-May to go and see a specialist. It's a low risk, and the benefits will be enormous. Just that if it does go wrong, I'll be in a right mess. If I blank my left eye and use just my right, this screen just becomes a bright white square with a black border.