I was left for dead and my face was like something from a horror show after a hit and run on Christmas Day

Jan Kelly, who was 30 at the time, experienced devastating injuries following a hit-and-run crash on Christmas Day 1981 when she was just 30 years old.

The force of the impact threw her down the street and caused severe facial injuries including a broken cheekbone and a blood clot, which formed behind Jan’s eye, resulting in years of vision misery.

She was left with a debilitating eye injury, and spent decades living in a "veil of fog."

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Jan said: “I was working as a nurse in Lancaster and was crossing the street on my lunch break when a car came flying round the corner, struck me and threw me along the road.

“The driver sped off, leaving me with a number of serious injuries including a broken cheekbone.”

The young mother was taken to Lancaster Hospital, where she described her badly bruised and swollen face as a ‘horror show’.

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On Boxing Day, she was transferred to Blackpool Hospital, where she underwent surgery for her facial injuries.

When she woke up, she was delighted to learn that the surgery to repair her cheekbone had been successful.

However, she was shocked to discover that the accident had caused a blood clot to form behind her right eye, requiring her to lie tilted upside down for four days to help disperse it.

She added: “Unfortunately, my vision deteriorated over the years after that accident and I developed a tugging sensation in my right eye.

“I really started to struggle and as a nurse who was responsible for taking care of patients and filling out medical notes, this was a big worry.”

For years, she battled with her vision before an optometrist revealed she was developing cataracts.

She then had to rely on glasses for a few years, but knew something was amiss when she found herself needing a new prescription every year instead of every other year.

She said: “Even then, I couldn’t read without squinting and I was still getting blurred vision. It was like a net curtain or a veil coming down over my eye.”

Now, at 74, she is preparing to celebrate her first clear-sighted Christmas thanks to successful cataract surgery at SpaMedica.

Jan was referred to SpaMedica as an NHS patient through her local opticians and was pleased to be booked in for initial tests in just four days at the provider’s specialist eye hospital in Kendal.

She added: “I knew my right eye was bad, but it was only when the SpaMedica optometrist examined me that I discovered the problem stemmed back to the blood clot caused by the car accident years before, which had exacerbated the cataracts.”

At this point, while the sight in Jan’s right eye was very poor, she believed her left eye to be OK.

However, when she returned for her post-surgery checkup appointment, the optician delivered the news that, in fact, her left eye also required cataract surgery.

She then returned to the clinic just a few weeks later for her second operation and says she feels ‘fantastic’ after getting her life and vision back.