Kate Lycett

It’s a tricky one, this. It’s a blog post I feel I should write, though my husband says I shouldn’t. He says I should forget about it and move on. He’s right – but just in case this could be shared with someone in time to stop them making the bad decision I made, I’m pressing ahead.

This isn’t for sympathy, and it isn’t for vengeance. It’s for information.

Speccy young me in National Health Specs

Just over 5 years ago I did a little post about having corrective eye surgery. It was December 2019. I was excited, I wasn’t nervous. I never said anything about it after that, and here’s why:

There’s not a lot of point naming names. The laser surgery company is probably the biggest name in the market in the UK. If you’ve ever looked into having eye surgery, this may have been the one that came up first . The surgeons name is almost irrelevant.

In a very brief summary.

• In December 2019 I had Natural Lens Replacement Surgery at their suggestion. Though the surgery didn’t go wrong, the result left me with short term damage (secondary cataracts) and permanent damage to my eyesight that cannot be reversed.
• I went from someone who wore one pair of glasses, or one pair of contact lenses, to someone who cannot tolerate contact lenses, and who has 5 different pairs of glasses for different activities. And even with those, my sight is quite poor.
• I have almost permanent double vision, and have had to change the way in which I paint and draw. It’s also reduced my ability to drive.
• Specialist medical reports done as part of a legal claim against the surgeon concluded that I was an unsuitable candidate for the operation because of a history of squint from a very young age. A range of tests were not carried out. Given my medical history, they should have been. They had a legal obligation to do so.
• After 4 and half years I reached a settlement out of court. There was no admission of error from the surgeon or the LS company. I was told from the start by my legal team that the defendants would never admit wrong doing.

That’s probably enough. But for anyone who knows someone considering the operation, here’s a long winded diary of events which may make them proceed with caution.

I’ve worn glasses since I was about 18 months old. I had a squint when I was very small and I had two corrective surgeries when I was a child. Ever since laser eye surgery became a thing in the early 90s, I’ve always wondered if it was possible for me. My prescription was strong, my eyes were very imbalanced, and with my squint history I always assumed it wasn’t. However, late one night I just did a little Googling and half filled in a form on line. I didn’t complete the form – I walked away. But the next day the company called me and invited me in for a consultation at their clinic in Leeds. I was told that Laser Surgery was not suitable, but that Natural Lens Replacement Surgery would be. NLR is basically cataract surgery; replacing your natural lens with a prescription acrylic lens. An operation that’s been around for over a century – I was told safer than laser surgery. A longer chat with an Optometrist in a white coat. Some tests. Some costings. A few days to think about it. After extracting a hefty deposit, the surgeon squeezed me in for a brief consultation between surgeries. We were literally with him for a few minutes. The conversation was standard. All standard questions – nothing pertinent to my case. At the time we assumed it was such a routine operation that there wasn’t really much to say. In the months that followed we became fairly convinced that he had never read my notes.

My eyes were done over two days December 12^th and 13^th 2019. Friday the 13^th – the day that Boris Johnson became our new PM.

Initially recovery was as expected. After a few days I started to worry. After Christmas I was sick with worry and demanded an emergency appointment back at the Manchester clinic. My sight was juddery – wobbly. Everything was dimmed. I’d got myself to the clinic on the train, and I’d gone on my own. My concerns were dismissed and I remember being told that as an artist I was being hypersensitive.

Over the next few weeks things got steadily worse. I couldn’t cross the road on my own. I wouldn’t go out on my own as I didn’t recognise people. Everything was getting dimmer and it felt like I was looking at the world through a narrow tube. And still everything juddered. I could look at a fixed point so, strangely, I could still sew prints on my sewing machine. But I could not scan a page or a rack of inks, so couldn’t paint or draw.

Numerous phone calls got us nowhere. The surgeon would not see us until 8 weeks after the surgery. I was told I was being impatient. I was at this stage inconsolable, and Daniel was begging them. It made no difference. I left a one star review on Trust Pilot and got called within the hour for an appointment with a surgeon in Manchester. At this point I was allocated a Patient Representative who came with me to all my appointments. She seemed nice – told me that her partner had just had the same procedure and was having similar problems. I had her mobile number and I called her in tears a number of times. She always managed to calm me down.

Tests at the Manchester clinic revealed secondary cataracts, also known as posterior capsule opacification (PCO); essentially scar tissue forming around the edge of each new lens reducing light and vision. Very common. Actually very very common – like 20% of patients get it to some degree (which wasn’t a statistic shared on the advertising leaflets!). On Valentines Day I had a laser procedure called a YAG to cut away the scar tissue. It was like someone drawing net curtains from my eyes and I was hopeful that everything would be okay after a few days. It was not.

The PCO had been masking other visual disturbances: flare, strobing, glare, ghosting, double vision. At this point we realised that I could no longer tolerate contact lenses as my eyes were too dry after the NLR and the YAG. That any spectacles would need to include a prism. Essentially, no matter what I wore, I could not get clear vision.

Suddenly all appointments were cancelled and we went in to lock down. I waited patiently for them to get in touch when they reopened. They never did.

Over lock-down I began to paint small scale pictures which meant that my eyes didn’t have to scan a large page. I took photos and worked from those, rather than drawing from life. I had several different prescription reading glasses. One for drawing, one for gilding, one for sewing. Eventually, once opticians were open again in the summer, I managed to get prescription distance glasses so I could drive again. I hadn’t felt safe enough to drive for 6 months

Experimenting with different prescriptions having been left high and dry by the LS company. Thank goodness you can get glasses on Amazon!

In September 2020 I chatted to a friend who was considering NLR surgery, and had had a consultation with the same company. I was angry to discover that they were operating again but hadn’t been in touch. I’d never been signed off. I wrote down details of everything that had happened to me, and he took it along to an appointment. His clinician said ”I know just who you are talking about. I was called in to deal with her case. She should never have been referred for surgery in the first place”. At this point I decided I needed to speak up.

Unfortunately for one woman versus a huge corporation (with a huge legal team), ‘no win no fee is’ the only option. But my solicitors were great, and had had dealings with this laser surgery company before. I was warned that they were slippery and would admit nothing. They were right.

The Solicitors pursued the surgeon and the LS company separately; the surgeon being self employed, sub-contracted by the company. They each blamed the other. A year or so in, I was advised to pursue only one of them, as if the case succeeded against one, but not the other, the other party could claim their legal expenses out of any settlement. It was decided that the LS company should be dropped, going only after the surgeon. I could see the sense, but remember that the LS company walked away at the beginning of lock down, feeling no responsibility for their patient unable to see well enough to drive or to work. They never got back in touch.

Medical reports (and there were many trips for tests at Spire and at LGI) concluded that because of my childhood history of squint I should have been referred, by the surgeon, to a different clinic for a range of specialist tests relating to eye imbalance and squint before he approved me for surgery. A specialist Orthoptist would have advised against surgery as, after 40+ years of the brain suppressing the double vision caused by a squint, any messing around would have had a very high chance of permanent visual complications.

As with most cases like these, mine did not get to court and a financial settlement was made 4 years and 6 months after the surgeries. The surgeon never admitted liability, but when the final reports were provided his legal team were very keen to settle quickly.

I conclude that I was naive. I’d never had any dealings with private medicine before and foolishly believed that a doctor would never do anything that was not within my best interests. I believe that the surgeon was too busy to read my notes, and I was on a conveyor belt of paying customers for an easy, standard operation. I believe that the LS company realised early on that the operation should not have gone ahead and that my kindly patient representative was them managing me, and keeping me quiet. I believe that they clean their social media, and I should have been suspicious that there were not bad reviews. I know now that they have been in trouble before, and that they are almost impossible to prosecute. There was a Radio 4 program in which they were investigated. I would like to believe that the surgeon learned something from my case and will behave differently in future.

So if we’re ever sat in the pub together or across the table in a cafe and I look shifty, it’s not because I’m feeling guilty about something, but because I’m not sure which of your lovely pairs of eyes to look in to.

To write this has been cathartic. I’m done now. Let’s move on.

If you want to ask any questions about my case, then please email me. I’m happy to share.