I could feel their excitement, but I was feeling nothing but dread.

My first trip to an optometrist, in my mid-twenties, was simply to get some reading glasses.

But the optometrist had found something more intriguing and had called the entire office in to peer into my eyes.

“I have only seen this in textbooks,” he told me.

The optometrist explained that he could see pigments floating in my eye. It was if someone had tipped pepper from a shaker.

He told me it was Krukenberg spindle or more simply pigment dispersion syndrome. The pigment becomes dislodged after rubbing off the back of your iris.

The danger was, the optometrist explained back then, the pigment can clog the eye’s drainage canal causing the pressure to rise, ultimately damaging the optic nerve.

But back in my twenties, thankfully my pressure was fine.

The reaction to my eyes was repeated by every new eye practitioner including when I moved to America as U.S. Correspondent for the 7 Network.

My pressure remained under control until my early forties, when I was sent to an Ophthalmologist who specialised in laser treatment.

Selective Laser Traveculoplasty or SLT is relatively painless. For the next several years it would help reduce the pressure in my eyes.

Then in 2017, it stopped working. My eye pressure started rising beyond 20 – the high end of normal.

I was gradually prescribed one eye drop, twice a day. It quickly became four different drops - some up to four times a day.

Then a tablet that is often taken by mountain climbers to help combat altitude. It came with terrible side effects.

But my pressure was still rising.

It was about then; Channel 7 gave me the opportunity to return temporarily from the U.S. to Melbourne to read the 6pm news over summer.

I was excited - but my eyes weren’t. They had turned bright red. I was told it was an infection that would quickly go away. 

I would only learn later that I was allergic to one of the eye drops.

My eyes were red, sore and weeping. I looked like a cast member of the Walking Dead.

Not the ideal for news reading. I would have to wipe my eyes between intros.

Memes were being made suggesting I was smoking marijuana on set. If only.

My wife Tracy had joined me for Christmas and was alarmed at what she saw. 

When she returned to the U.S. ahead of me, she began frantically calling around to find a specialist. The waiting list in America can be as long as a year.

Fortunately, Tracy was able to get me in to see Dr Vic Chopra at the Doheny Eye Institute. 

Far more experienced than my first optometrist decades earlier, his reaction to my eyes was similar. 

Except he now shared my dread.

Despite being on multiple drops, the pressure in both eyes was in the high 50s. Dr Chopra warned me that I was in danger of my eyes “stroking out”.

Effectively sending me blind. It urgently needed surgical intervention. 

Dr Chopra cancelled another patient’s surgery schedule for the following Monday  to slot me.

I underwent a trabectome in my left eye – basically cutting the mesh in the eye’s drain to unclog it. The surgery was unsuccessful.

It was the same result for my right eye two weeks later.

My pressure was still dangerously high.

Then it was trabeculectomy surgery – creating new drainage in the top of each eye.

The procedure worked in my left eye. Almost too well. From a pressure of high fifties, it fell to four creating “wrinkles” on the surface of the eye, which left me struggling to see. Think of the eye as balloon that been gone from being over inflated only to have the air released.

The trabeculectomy on my right eye two weeks later failed. 

At this stage Tracy was driving me an hour each way to the surgery, almost every day, where we would have to wait several hours to be seen. Often only to hear bad news.

The multiple surgeries had left me sensitive to light and only able to read with a magnifying strip of plastic.

Dr Chopra told me I was one of the few patients who kept him awake at night.

I’m of the generation who had been taught men don’t cry but I remember breaking down in front of Tracy fearful that I might lose my sight and be unable to watch our then 9-year-old son Addison grow up.

By this stage the pressure had even started to rise again in my left eye.

Dr Chopra seemed perplexed as to why the surgery hadn’t worked. He told me that he needed to open the “bleb” in my right eye to help it drain. 

It’s normally a procedure performed under anesthetic, but he felt like it couldn’t wait for the next surgery day.

Dr Chopra said he could try to open up the bleb in the clinic. Effectively inserting a fine needle into the new drainage and wiggling it around to open it up.

It was terribly uncomfortable. Even painful. Tracy was watching on in tears.

But it worked. 

I remained off work for five months until the blood in my eyes dissipated and I could see again.

Somehow, despite my news reading performance the previous Christmas, I was offered the weekend position in Melbourne in August 2018 meaning returning home after 18 years in the U.S.

I was lucky to be referred to Associate Professor Michael Coote from the Melbourne Eye Specialists.

Under Dr Coote, I have since undergone two more surgeries. One to reduce the pressure in my left eye and remove a cataract – a side effect of all the intervention. The pressure also had to be reduced in my right eye.

While I will need more surgeries, Dr Coote has reassured me that I won’t lose my sight.

It might seem strange, but I feel incredibly lucky. Because I was aware of my condition, I was constantly seeing a doctor.

Even then glaucoma, the so-called “silent thief of sight”, almost snuck up on me and stole mine.