LAGUNA BEACH : Free Surgery Gives Blind Retiree Sight

A retired engineer, blinded by cataracts, got a free operation that has restored the vision in one eye.

Johan Kempkens, 65, lost sight in his right eye three years ago, but worried that surgery was too experimental to risk. Then in March, he also lost sight in his left eye.

“I was stumbling around for a month,” Kempkens said. “I could mostly help myself because I knew where everything was, but when I went outside the house it was bad.”

At first, he used the red-painted curbs to guide himself to the market, he said, but after two weeks he could no longer see a hand in front of his face.

Eye doctor Roger Ohanesian heard about Kempkens’ case from an outreach worker at the Laguna Beach Senior Center. “It’s very rare to see cataracts as advanced as his in this country,” Ohanesian said.

Cataracts form when the protein strands that make up the eye’s lens break into pieces, Ohanesian said. Instead of being clear, the lens becomes cloudy and opaque like a piece of wax paper.

In 25 years of practice as an eye doctor, Ohanesian said he has never seen a patient who was blind in both eyes from a reversible condition. Kempkens, a Laguna Beach resident, said he had resigned himself to the blindness until a neighbor saw him stumbling down the street and persuaded him to seek help.

The cataract was so advanced that Ohanesian needed three hours, instead of the routine 20 minutes, to surgically remove Kempkens’ faulty eye lens and replace it with a plastic lens. Kempkens said he was able to read a newspaper the same day, April 1, that he got the surgery. He is scheduled to have his left eye lens replaced next month.

Ohanesian pronounced the right eye healthy when he saw Kempkens last week at his San Juan Capistrano office. Kempkens has almost perfect vision in one eye now, he said.

“It’s a total surprise to me, because I see more colors than I even could three years,” Kempkens said. “Things are so bright that I have to wear special sunshades.”

Ohanesian, who also performs free eye surgeries in Armenia, where his grandparents came from, said he was happy to do the work without charge. “Here’s a person in our country who can obviously use the help,” he said.

Kempkens said he wants to pay Ohanesian back by designing a mobile eye surgery center, perhaps built into a trailer, for use in rural areas.

Kempkens had led an active life until he lost vision in his left eye. He was even a volunteer firefighter, and helped lay hose for firefighters during the Laguna Beach wildfires, he said. “I could still see everything, but I couldn’t see small objects,” he recalled.

For the past few years, Kempkens has worked as a gardener, a painter, a picture framer and a repairman. Since he has no insurance and little savings, he would have had great difficulty in paying for the eye surgery, he said.

Kempkens said there were some aspects of his monthlong blindness that he appreciated. “My other senses started picking up,” he said. “I almost developed a kind of radar. You don’t have any distractions. And of course you don’t watch TV.”