Receiving the gift of sight

Costa Mesa resident Peggy Parsons can’t wait to drive a car again, watch a movie, or see her 17-year-old son perform in a school play.

Newport Beach eye surgeon Gregg Feinerman operated on Parsons free of charge Tuesday, removing a cataract from her right eye. The surgery will allow 62-year-old Parsons to see clearly for the first time in several years. Vision in Parsons’ left eye has been impaired since she was a child, but she has steadily relied more on her weaker left eye since being diagnosed with a cataract in the right one two years ago.

“I can’t wait to see Christmas lights,” Parsons said Tuesday morning, clad in surgical scrubs as she sat on an operating table at a Newport Beach clinic before the operation.

Feinerman chose Parsons from a field of about 75 visually-impaired applicants, who can’t afford surgery to restore their sight, as the first of five people to undergo free surgery.

“This is going to dramatically improve her life,” Feinerman said of Parsons, who has no health insurance. “Right now, she can’t even see the large ‘E’ on an eye chart.”

The doctor plans to perform four more free surgeries in 2010 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the nonprofit organization he founded, Operation In-Sight.

Operation In-Sight has helped restore the sight of hundreds of people in developing countries, by performing free surgeries and offering training and surgical equipment to doctors there.

Feinerman has traveled to Vietnam and other distant places to operate on people’s cataracts.

As the country slowly pulls itself out of a deep economic recession, he wants to focus his philanthropic energies closer to home.

For many of Feinerman’s patients, a simple, five-minute surgical procedure makes the difference between 20/20 vision and not being able to read street signs or a book.

Surgery to remove cataracts, one of the most common problems that Feinerman encounters, can cost about $5,000, which is out of the reach of many Americans without health insurance, Feinerman said.