Simon Thomsett

Category: Cataract Operation for Rosy, Crowned Eagles, Raptors | Date: Sep 08 2008 | By: simonthomsett

Saturday the 7^th Sept 2008 began early. It was difficult to sleep so I awoke before sunrise watching Tim the Lanner at the other end of the room do his morning preening session. Because the operation was to begin at 1pm, I thought it best to pack the car and leave for Nairobi at around 10AM. Rosy was taken out of his night shed and placed in the early sunlight. He is now accustomed to this and sat happily on his perch until Girl, his mate calls from the nearby shed. He calls back. I stared at him from the verandah and had second thoughts. “What if he died? “What if it was a failure and he would never see?” Today could be the end of an era, or a beginning of a new one.

Photo Paula Kahumbu

I packed the car with his only belongings, a thick carpet, and walked out the back to pick him up with the thick triple leather glove. My heart was very down. I could not bare the thought of losing him, yet it had to be done. As he stepped onto the glove, he became angry at the untimely disturbance and crushed my hand beneath. Then searing pain hit me in the index finger as he punctured all three layers of leather, skin, flesh and tendon to be stopped by bone….my bone. I let out a howl, cursed him badly and marched him off to the car uttering bitter things. Thank goodness he did that as the moment was far too heartbreaking. Good old Rosy, as formidable as ever!

Photo Paula Kahumbu

We arrived at Dr Barry Cockar’s Veterinary clinic after getting lost in Nairobi at about 11.45 AM, making record speed. Barry and Bernice his wife was there and insisted that I stay the night with them rather than drive back possibly late that night with a very sick eagle.

Dr Dan Gradin took us through the various stages of the surgery. The incision would be made almost at the part were the iris joins the cornea, and angled up to create a long tunnel. Then either a needle with a saline drip would be put in this hole, or a Phaco. Both techniques wash and suck out the damaged lens, after first puncturing the thick coated jacket in which it is housed. This capsule must be cut in the anterior part, but not the posterior…which remains intact. The lens maybe soft and easily removed or hard and difficult to remove. There was no way of knowing until you get there. The access is straightforward. The instrument goes in at the side then it is plunged down the pupil onto the lens which lies just behind. It is then ploughed out in shallow grooves. After removing this he would have to decide whether or not to put the lenses in. In other words the decision was to be made at the operating table.

Dr Nonee Magre came with the donated supplies from Ingeborg Fromberg of Acrivet, which included a CD of how to roll and house the lens in a special syringe-type applicator. Kaneto Mineto and Mr.Shiojiri Kichitaro of the Japan Wildlife Centre Kenya, who had earlier donated some $800 to this operation came, followed by Dr Paula Kahumbu of Wildlife Direct and Peter Greste who was to take documentary video of the proceedings. Dr Daniel Mundia and nurses Rose Louisa and Jane Huria of the PCEA Kikuyu Hospital Eye Unit. The small surgery was bulging with people.

A little latter than planned, Rosy finally had the first anesthetic dose. This is hair-raising. For some reason patients like to talk to their surgeons before surgery, not to their anesthesiologist, the person that keeps them a hair’s breadth away from death. This was the part I feared the most, and said as much to Peter with a camera pointed in my face.

Dr Cockar and Dr Mundia observing Dr Magre putting in the eye drops, Peter Greste filming for BBC

Checking eye pressure

Both Barry and Nonee had it well covered with each taking turns to listen to his heart and breathing. In a few minutes his wings fell to his sides, his head rolled and he was out. He was laid on the table covered in sheets and had a special sheet placed over his eye, an eye clip a bit bigger than a paper clip, prized his eyelids open and soon all there was, was an isolated eye staring out of a sheet at a surgery filled with gowned and masked surgeons. My job was to hold his head so that his eye was static, and to do so unflinchingly, despite the wound that Rosy had inflicted on my hand earlier that day. I had a great view and was fascinated from the start as Dan talked all of us through it. Nonee and Barry were itching to get a closer look and Peter went so far as to stab most of the surgeons in the back of the head with the furry microphone boom of his camera, to get the closest possible pictures. Dan is a veteran of some 10,000 surgeries all on people, and it was clear that he too was fascinated by the avian eye, so much bigger and more advanced than a human’s.

He went straight to work and it was remarkable to see the skill and confidence. At the same time all of it made good sense. The eye is like a camera and so long as you restored all the functioning bits, it would work.

(I am waiting on some photographs and will post the second part of the story soon)

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Tags: Cataract operation on crowned eagle, Crowned Eagle, Kenya, Kikuyu eye hospital, Simon Thomsett