Not a pretty sight - that's me

At birth I was found to have what was described as an 'alternating squint', which made me a pathetic wee thing. One eye went into the corner near my nose and when I covered the bad eye with my hand the other eye went into the middle, hence 'alternating'. So I wasn't a pretty sight, as well as being very tiny.

Mum and dad were devastated, of course, for who wants a child with a visible defect that other kids can ridicule?

So right from being a small child I had regular trips to the hospital for eye tests to see if the squint could be corrected. And at three years old I was prescribed glasses.

The ophthalmologist decided to operate on my eyes at 4 years old, after I had been wearing little NHS round pink specs for a year - they were tied on by having elastic around the back of my head.

So as a small child I was admitted to hospital and one eye was operated on. When I woke up from the surgery I was terrified to discover that both of my arms were heavily bandaged. I was frightened that something bad had happened that they hadn't told me about.

What the bandages were actually for was to stop me lifting my arms and rubbing my eyes and causing damage. What a relief!

Then followed a further four years of wearing glasses, regular hospital visits and an occasional elastoplast on top of the lens covering my good eye, because the other eye had been labelled 'lazy' and needed to work on its own, not just slide into the corner.

To be fair, the condition is hereditary and my auntie (mum's sister) suffered from the same thing - but hers had never been corrected.

At age 8 I was admitted once again to the hospital and this time the surgery was carried out on the other eye, the eye muscles adjusted in length so that now when I looked at anyone my two eyes worked in tandem and neither eye was misbehaving.

Mum and dad were distraught each time I had to stay in hospital and my older brother pined for me while I was away. Nobody to fight with, I thought.

But I was very happy to go home at the end of the week, because I had spent my 8th birthday in hospital, and it was like Christmas, arriving home to hugs and presents.

The result of these operations was near-perfectly straight eyes. I still had to wear glasses to improve my vision but no-one could accuse me of having crooked eyes. And coloured contact lenses are a real bonus for vain people like me.

Forty years later during an eye test I asked the ophthalmologist what they do now for such a disorder. 'Exactly the same,' she said, 'and they couldn't do a better job than they did way back then. It's very good, you have nice straight eyes.'

I was so pleased. And so was mum. I told mum how grateful I was that she got my eyes fixed.

My auntie is now 81 and her eyes still have a squint. Funny that neither she nor her mum never thought to have it corrected.

And good that my mum did it for me.