I have premature cataracts (I’m under 40 - barely), and I’m in the midst of having cataract surgeries (ie one eye is done and the other isn’t). I have less than 2 weeks before they do my left (non-dominant) eye. I have been myopic since I was in grade 5 and with the surgery, my right eye is now near 20/20… If my other eye is done to be 20/20 as well, then I will need reading glasses for everything up close - reading, sewing, being on the computer, etc. The doctors have proposed ‘monovision’ or surgery in which the dominannt eye is corrected for distance and the non-dominant eye is corrected for up close. Supposedly most people (and their brains) adjust to the difference with their eyes and they don’t need glasses most of the time.
So have any of the teeming millions had either monovision cataract surgery or monovision refractive eye surgery? Do you like it or do you regret it?
Um… a contact lens on one side would enable you to experience monovision BEFORE surgery makes the condition permanent. If you are curious, and there is time, you might consider asking to try this before you actually make it so forever.
It should also be mentioned that men are slightly less likely to adapt well to this type of visual adjustment.
If you have the surgery and it works, fine. If it doesn’t work - that is, your brain doesn’t make the adjustment - you’ll need visual correction for one eye or the other, and possibly both.
I had my left eye done last September, and need to go back to the opthamologist to check on the progress of the cataract in the right eye (which likely needs to be removed). My surgeon talked about this approach, but I think he ended up using an accommodating IOL so I’m assuming this isn’t an option for me now. I do wear reading glasses now.
I’m 47 and I have one eye that looks normal but has a missing lens (childhood accident) and have been told that getting a new synthetic lens installed would be a waste of time because my brain’s vision center could not integrate it back into true stereoscopic vision.
You’re being told that your near 40 year old brain will re-wire the vision inputs to accommodate this far/close eye differential. Before you have ANY surgery done you had better make damn sure these “predictions” are accurate.
I concur. I’ve heard that with Lasik, the same option applies (correcting different eyes for different distances) and that they require you to test this out with contact lenses before the surgery.
It’s one of the reasons I doubt I’ll ever get Lasik - I have strong doubts I’d be able to adapt to that sort of difference (I couldn’t even handle progressive lenses) and since I’d most likely need glasses regardless, why bother
I have had momocular vision most of my life (the differences between my two eyes are so great that it is nearly impossible for me to focus both of them on the same thing, even with correction. It’s because I have “non-wandering lazy eye” in my left, which was never corrected in childhood, and now its too late and I’m legally blind in that eye).
Mostly, I don’t notice it. Usually, other people notice that I read with one eye closed (I can read with either eye, but not both at the same time or the image doubles, mixes and blurs.)
The one thing I can think of that might be concerning to you is that I have trouble when I drive at night. My left eye is my “near vision” eye and my right is my “far vision” eye. So, my right eye tracks oncoming cars, then just as they approach near my car, my left eye switches to dominance. When I am driving on a 2 lane, undivided road, the effect is a rather terrifying feeling that the oncoming car has just lept into my lane. It doesn’t trouble me during the day because there are many other placement signals (such as shadows) that prevent the parallax shift from being so noticeable.
I have learned to adapt (mostly by focusing on my relation to the right-hand lane line, rather than the centerline). However I do avoid driving at night if I can help it, choose divided or 4 lane roads if I can’t, and if I can’t do either of those things, I tend to drive cautiously and waaaay over to the right.
Another occasionally amusing side effect is that in dim, shadowless lighting conditions (such as the light of a half-moon) I have extremely weak depth perception. These lighting conditions are rarely experienced in the real world, but when I worked as a summer camp counsellor, I would often walk into trees on my way back from the bathroom at night. LOL.
I had my left cataract removed when I was 13, waiting a few more years for the right one. (Surgeons don’t like to subject teenagers to frequent surguries, apparently.) So I had a very significant difference between my left and right eye for those years, with about 20/20 in the left and 20/100 in the right (increasing to 20/400 in bright sunlight, which is basically near-blind.)
I got used to it immediately. Indoors and for close-up sight I used both eyes, outdoors and for distance sight I just used the left. This led to rather poor depth perception and the occasional tree-branch attacking me from the right, but I got used to that as well. After having the second eye done I can see great out of both of them, though the left is focused for distance while the right is for close-up. I found it a little difficult to adjust to reading with one eye, but that is second-nature now.
Thanks for the replies I would love to try the short term contact lens ‘trial’ if I could but because I am having cataract surgery rather than lasik, it won’t really give me an idea what it will be like because of the poor vision due to the cataracts. (Or at least that is what my doctor told me).
Thie potential lack of depth perception with monovision concerns me. I guess the thing I need to decide what is a bigger nuisance - lack of depth perception vor needing glasses to look at my watch, read anything, look at the computer screen etc.
Just to clarify, the lack of depth perception is only noticable under certain fairly rare light conditions. In normal day and night lighting, I have no trouble with depth. The human brain is a powerful machine, and uses other available data to interpret depth.
I have nothing to add about monovision because apart from a week between my cataract surgeries at 30 years old, I have not experienced it. The first three days I banged my shoulder going through doorways, and couldn’t make my foot connect with stairs properly, but I did adjust. (Also missed my food on my plate!)
One thing about the Intra ocular lenses - the doctor said he usually puts implants in which render you far-sighted, as it’s mostly elderly people who have cataracts done. We had long discussions about what would be best for me.
In the end I chose lenses with a focal length of 30cm as I was planning on having another baby, and I wanted to breastfeed and read etc without wearing glasses. It has worked relatively well. The only trouble is that when I hold a baby or read for long periods, I feel the need to take my glasses OFF! Or get the book or baby further away from me. But that’s no great handicap.
And I went from being able to read one word at a time in a book, with it up to my face about an inch away, to being able to see perfectly normally, driving, chasing my kids, swimming, you name it. My life was revolutionised, and I hope that yours will be too.
I just had my first cataract surgery (24 hrs ago) in my left eye which will be my near vision eye for monovision. I opted for computer distance monovision rather then extreme close-up for reading fine print. In this first 24 hours I already do not have to wear my glasses around the house or for driving the car or for watching TV across the room. for all of these activities I had to wear glasses prior to my surgery yesterday.
I can read fairly small print on the computer with my left eye. There is a little bit of ghosting with both eyes open which clears up when I close my right eye. Since this is the first day I expect this will improve over time, especially after my second surgery is done which will be next week. At this point I am happy with the results at only one day post surgery and do not think it is impossible for eyes to adjust to monovision even at 65 years of age.
Here is something to consider. My daughter is 20/20 in one eye and something like 20/200 in the other. She tried glasses to correct the nearsighted eye, but while it did correct it, the two images were now different sizes. A near-sighted correction reduces the image size (and the other way increases it). So she has gone through life without wearing glasses. Now, at age 47, she doesn’t need reading glasses. She just reads and drives one-eyed, but with the opposite eyes. Although she claims to get some useful binocular vision anyway.
When monovision was suggested to me, I was kind of worried about it. However, I researched it. Do you know that although they didn’t have surgery, after he won the presidency, both Reagans uses 2 different contact lenses-1 for distance and 1 for close work. I figured if they could do it, and neither were young when he entered the White House, I could do it! Good luck.
I am 2 weeks past monovision toric lens replacement in my left (nondominate eye) unfortunately, previously the surgeon set the eye the first time for distance and for some unknown reason at 24". I could not even see the dashboard of my car when driving. I wore the monovision contact lenses for 2 months. They worked fine. But after this 2nd surgery I am almost insane with blurriness in the left eye. I was not prepared to lose all distance vision. Night driving with the haloes and rings around lights is intolerable. I truly wish I would have opted for the trifocal Pan-optic from the beginning. I love the way my unoperated-on right eye with a contact works now. Even closeup near vision is superior to the left corrected near-sighted eye. I have a call into the clinic about this situation. I know it takes adaptation, but in the mean time, I feel life I am going crazy.
