When four-time world boxing champion Ricky Hatton squinted and held his phone up to the light, all he could see was a blurry, frustrating image.
Somewhere on the screen were the vital details of a major boxing deal Ricky was negotiating on behalf of his 23-year-old son and fellow boxer Campbell.
Unable to locate his glasses, he had no choice but to ask a passerby to read him the crucial message.
“By the time I turned 40 my eyesight started to fail and it’s gotten worse with each passing year,” says Ricky, who is 45 and lives alone in Manchester.
‘It was seriously damaging my life: one of the things I enjoy most is giving motivational and after-dinner speeches.
“But I lived in fear of standing in front of a room full of people, having to look at my notes and discovering I didn’t have my reading glasses on.”
Seeing clearly, world boxing champion Ricky Hatton with his girlfriend, actress Claire Sweeney
Compared to his well-documented struggles with poor mental health and alcohol and drug addiction, failing eyesight might not seem like such a big opponent for a man who was known as “El Sicario” during his boxing career.
But the father of three (he also has two daughters aged 11 and 10 with ex-fiancée Jennifer Dooley) insists this has at times seriously hampered him in his new role as a boxing promoter and trainer.
“I’m constantly on the move and on my phone to deal with work matters,” he explains. “All my messages and calendar are on my phone. That includes details of where the lads I train with are boxing, my after-dinner speaking engagements and my charity work.” (Ricky is a mental health ambassador.)
Although seeing distant objects was less of a problem, reading (especially small text on his phone) became so difficult that his friends called him Grandpa.
“I didn’t care because I’m one (his son has a six-year-old daughter),” says Ricky, who retired from professional boxing in 2012. “But I was quite worried that something serious was happening to my eyes.”
A visit to the optician revealed that she had presbyopia (the age-related condition that makes it difficult to see things up close due to hardening of the lens of the eye) and she was prescribed reading glasses.
But she kept losing them, so she bought numerous ready-made pairs that she kept scattered throughout the house.
Boxer Ricky Hatton in action in 2012, during an illustrious career in the ring
“Still, I could never find them when the phone rang and I needed to take notes,” she says. “And the cheap ones I got off the shelf at the local drugstore weren’t very good; things were still a bit blurry.”
Desperate for a solution, Ricky consulted a private eye clinic, Optegra, in Manchester in February, where tests revealed that as well as presbyopia, he had hyperopia, which causes difficulty focusing on close objects but is not related to ageing.
Instead, the condition, which affects around 13 million Britons, is caused by the eye being shorter than normal (front to back), which alters the way it refracts (or bends) incoming light.
It was this, along with presbyopia, that explained why Ricky’s eyesight was deteriorating so rapidly.
“People like Ricky, who are farsighted, tend to get presbyopia much earlier in life,” says Shafiq Rehman, a consultant ophthalmologist who treated him at the Optegra clinic. “They are fine in their teens, 20s and 30s as the cornea (the clear part at the front of the eye that focuses light at the back of the eye to form an image) has a lot of flexibility. But that diminishes with age.”
The effect of age-related farsightedness (presbyopia) on someone who is already farsighted is, says Mr. Rehman, a “double whammy.”
“If your vision is good, you tend to get presbyopia in your late 40s, but with hyperopia, it’s delayed until your early 40s,” he says.
People with farsightedness often need to squint to see clearly, may suffer from eye strain or headaches, and the condition can be hereditary.
However, it does not necessarily get worse with age; in fact, children with farsightedness may outgrow it as their eyes develop and lengthen: this makes the cornea more curved and produces better focused images.
Many people with this condition spend their lives wearing glasses that correct the problem.
These can be prescription reading glasses or, for those who also have difficulty seeing things in the distance, varifocal lenses, which have one type of glass on the bottom to focus on close objects and a different one on the top to drive or zoom in on things far away.
Laser surgery, a popular treatment for nearsightedness (or myopia, the inability to see things in the distance), is less suitable for those who cannot focus on things close up due to the shape of their eyeball.
Surgeons typically perform it only in mild cases of farsightedness. Even in these cases, studies show there is a good chance that vision will deteriorate again within five years in up to half of patients, says Mr Rehman.
She recommended that Ricky undergo lens replacement surgery, where his natural lens is removed and a prescription plastic one is inserted. This surgery is only available on the NHS for patients with cataracts (when the lens becomes cloudy) that are so severe that they affect their quality of life.
The idea is that the artificial lens has the flexibility to focus incoming light at the right point in the eye to produce a sharp image.
Before the procedure, Ricky was given a few drops of anesthesia in each of his eyes.
A series of small incisions were made in the cornea, before the lens was broken and removed with a suction tube.
The capsule that surrounds the outside of the lens in both eyes (a bit like the skin of a grape) was kept intact to hold the new artificial lens in place.
After his operation (which cost almost £8,000 for both eyes) in April, Ricky rested for about half an hour before being driven home by his agent Paul.
“I didn’t even need him to stay the night,” he recalls.
‘I thought I was going to have eye patches but I was able to watch football on TV and I didn’t feel any discomfort, just like I didn’t feel any discomfort during the operation. My eyes were just a little blurry and watery.
“I had been warned to take time off work and not push myself, so my assistant coach stepped in.”
The next day, Ricky says he was able to read the small text on his phone and his vision gradually improved. “I went around the house collecting all my old reading glasses and put them in a drawer in case anyone else needs them, because I don’t need them anymore.”
In rare cases, Mr. Rehman says, patients who need lens replacement may still need reading glasses.
In lens replacement surgery, a series of small incisions are made in the cornea, before the natural lens is broken up and removed with a suction tube.
“Maybe they want to read War and Peace,” he jokes, meaning big books with small print. “But overall their vision remains stable.”
But not all experts believe that replacing the natural lens is appropriate for anything other than cataracts.
Professor David Garty, a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London who has performed more than 17,000 lens replacement operations on cataract patients, says he does not agree with the procedure just to get rid of reading glasses.
“Personally, I wouldn’t do it,” he says. “It’s an invasive procedure and there are risks like infection, although they are very low.”
‘Cataract surgery is the most common operation worldwide and is ultra-safe, highly sophisticated and very predictable.
“But when patients undergo surgery for presbyopia, they are operating on a normal eye and that’s something you really have to think about.”
However, Professor Garty adds that in cases where patients need glasses for both reading and distance vision (something Ricky was warned he would soon need due to his rapidly deteriorating eyesight), eye surgery could have “benefits”.
Ricky, who is dating actress Claire Sweeney, now says he “should have done it sooner”.
“Life has become so much easier since I have children. Why have I been wasting time and worrying so much for the past few years?”
