When Pat Saunders' glaucoma was picked up during an awareness week for the condition, she joked with the doctor that if it had been a different "week" he might have suspected a different disease.
Ms Saunders' sense of humour has helped her cope with a variety of health problems, including the type 1 diabetes of her two sons, her own type 2 diabetes, and heart bypass surgery.
She had turned up at her GP's in 2005 during Glaucoma Awareness Week after having a sharp pain above her right eyebrow. After examining her, the doctor told her she must go to the eye clinic at Dunedin Hospital immediately.
Glaucoma was diagnosed in her right eye.
Ms Saunders (73) said she tried a variety of eye drops and had multiple bouts of laser treatments before having a Molteno drain inserted to ease the pressure on the eye in 2007.
She had also required cataract removal in that same eye.
" I didn't know you could have so much done to an eye," Ms Saunders said, paying tribute to the "absolutely wonderful" treatment she had been given at the clinic.
Her case has been used to help educate trainee doctors.
She urged people to get their eyes checked regularly, as "I wouldn't have known I had glaucoma."
While she now realised that having diabetes had increased her chance of getting the disease, she pointed out that anybody could get it.
She likened people getting their eyes checked to men having their prostate checked: "You don't want to go because ` I'm all right', but if you find out too late that you have something, you wish you had."
Today, Ms Saunders does not need to use eye drops and has "excellent" sight in the eye with the drain, with the assistance of spectacles.
Ophthalmologist Prof Tony Molteno told her recently it was "beautiful".
"I knew he wasn't talking about me. He had to be talking about my eye".
Her left eye, however, requires a cataract removal.
Ms Saunders said she advised the clinic to "catch me if you can".
Prof Molteno, formerly of South Africa, has gained international recognition for his ophthalmology innovations, particularly the Molteno drain, a device which drains the anterior chamber of the eye and lowers the damaging pressure.
His early experiments were carried out successfully on rabbits, with later work carried out on black African babies who had what he has described as " dreadful congenital glaucomas" and who were considered to have a hopeless prognosis.
He came to New Zealand in 1977 and has been a professor at the University of Otago medical school since 2002.