I’ve been doing this and I’m always disappointed in the “difference”. 
mmm
Turns out I’ll be having a cataract removed (one eye) in the very near future.
So I’ve been reading this thread closely. Thanks for all the input.
I won’t be doing the lens thing, though – I’m fine with wearing glasses. Seems scary. And expensive (since my insurance won’t pay for it – I checked).
The lens implant is worth it for me because I have so much trouble with glasses. My eyesight is super bad, I cannot even see the large E at the top of the chart. And my eyes are so sensitive that lenses have to be made just right – just exactly right – or I cannot see. It’s not uncommon for shops to have to remake them multiple times before I can see out of them, and it’s not uncommon for me to have to wait three months before I get a pair I can see with. Some shops have gotten so frustrated with me that they seem to think I’m just lying for whatever purpose.
I spend so much on glasses and contacts that I reckon the $5500 I’m spending out of pocket will pay for itself in just a few years.
Second cataract surgery/lens implant is finished, and the results look (heh) promising. This one was my near vision, so I’m just now, after a couple of days, seeing well enough again to read and use my computer. But wow! Before, I was having to enlarge the screen five- or sixfold. Now it’s sharp with no enlargement… And so white! Imagine that, this site does not have a dingy yellowish background after all.
For any of you about to go through this, it’s a piece of cake.
EDIT: Just to mention, my distance vision is powerful now. I amazed the wife yesterday by reading the smaller lines of a building directory from across the lobby. It’s like my eyes are on Viagra!
I’ve been signed onto the Board for about an hour now, and I just want to emphasize how blown away I am by how crisp and clear it is now. I did know the cataracts were affecting my vision to some extent, but I had no idea how bad it had grown. For anyone thinking about having cataract surgery, I urge you to do it.
I’m happy that you’re happy with the results. I’d worn glasses since around the age of 11 and had cataract surgery about 11 years ago. I was ecstatic to have the “corrective lenses required” removed from my driver’s license.
My brother has the procedure on the second eye tomorrow; the first was two weeks ago. He’s been happy with the result. And his cataracts seemed to come on quickly; he first noticed the blurriness in November. He’s 57, which seems young to me.
Oh yeah, driver’s license. I guess I’ll have to get that removed from mine too.
My cousin had them in her 40’s, due to prolonged cortisone medication in her teens/early 20’s.
My husband had both his eyes done when he was about that age (it went very well). He just recently had to have a capsulotomy done. He is now 73. I am a couple of years younger and have not, so far, needed to have cataract surgery. Last year an optometrist (not my regular one) told me he thought I might need it in a few years. This year my regular one did not.
I’m pretty sure they’ll do SOME kind of lens - if only a basic one. Otherwise you’d need to visit a soft-drink manufacturer in Georgia to produce your eyewear. You may have to discuss what strength you prefer - e.g. setting yourself up for reading versus distance, for example. My mother-in-law said she told the doctor “I have to be able to see well enough to tweeze” so she got a closer-up correction than I opted for.
Nearly 3 years into it and I’m still happy with my choice of lenses. My vision isn’t 20:20, but more like 20:30 or so, which is good enough to drive without correction. I opted for the “low add” multifocals, which lets me see well enough to read the car dashboard. Regular multifocal implants seemed like the worst of both worlds: I’d have needed glasses for everyday walking-around-the-house, plus my experience with full-on multifocal glasses (to handle reading and distance) was an exercise in pure misery.
Reading a book requires reading glasses (I’ve got numerous pairs of Costco cheapos lying around the house) but I usually use my Kindle - and adjusting the backlight usually solves that. Ditto on my phone - I can usually get by with turning up the brightness. All in all, I almost never need the reading glasses; often I can manage by just shining a light on what I’m trying to read.
Browsing in a bookstore is still a problem as I can barely read the backs of the books - but with COVID, I’m not doing that too much.
I do have prescription glasses for the computer - they are a multifocal for computer distance and reading distance.
As far as halos - yes, I do still see them a bit when driving at night, but it’s something I barely notice any more. No worse than the pre-surgery haze around lights at night.
I paid out of pocket for the upgraded lenses, and the use of the laser. While the surgery can be done without that, I was convinced that it would do a somewhat better job based on all the reading I did. Plus they fixed the astigmatism in one eye - the other one had too much to fix, so that lens implant handled it.
I did finally go to the DMV, about a year ago, to get the restriction removed from my license - I’d been driving somewhat, er, illegally all that time. I guess if I’d gotten pulled over I’d have said I had contact lenses. The eye doc gave me a form to take to the DMV - didn’t even have to redo the eye exam.
Getting Eye # 2 done in about 12 hours.
Wish me luck, y’all.
mmm
Best of luck to you, mmm.
Part of me wishes my eyes would get worse faster so I can hurry up and get this over with. The other part of me is saying wait 4 years and one month please, for Medicare.
Good luck. I hope you’re as pleased with your results as I am with mine.
Thanks, Sam.
Eyeball #2 is in the books. The actual procedure was painless but there was significant discomfort later in the evening (last night).
Doc was happy at the follow-up visit yesterday, and today the pain is mostly gone.
I’m glad I did it, but also very glad it’s over.
mmm
You don’t have to have a corrective lens implanted. I know 2 people who did not have corrective lenses. One did not due to cost. The other was not a candidate. Both wear regular glasses now.
I had mine done in February and had corrective lenses. Insurance does not cover the cost of corrective lenses, or the extra charge for the physician to implant. I paid about $3K out of pocket.
Thanks. I’ll be discussing this with the ophthalmologist soon enough, so we’ll see. Who knows, maybe she’ll talk me into it.
As to lenses and glasses and all that, I’ve been wearing glasses all my life (and yes, they’re pretty thick), and I have the restriction on my license, and all that, and I don’t really care. Glasses have always worked just fine for me. I don’t even like contacts. Tried them once (maybe twenty years ago), found them uncomfortable, never tried again.
Insurance also won’t cover the cost until a doc determines that it is “medically needed”. I have a friend who elected to pay for the whole thing out-of-pocket rather than wait until someone who doesn’t understand his profession determines it is medically needed. Good on him and he is very happy he did it. He is a racing driving instructor and good distance eyesight, including color, is very valuable for him to stay in that career.
I was 58 when I noticed some loss in vision - my left eye was always the worse one (-3.5 or so correction - so not all that awful) and one day I realized that if I closed my right eye, my vision was NOT as good. I saw the eye doc who almost instantly said I was developing a cataract. It had come on fairly quickly - as I’d had an optometrist exam no more than 18 months earlier where there were no issues.
From memory, I think my vision had gone to about a -5 at that point and it was -6 by the time she gave up on pushing me to try to fix it with glasses: the guidelines were “can’t get to 20-20 with corrective lenses” or "2+ diopters difference between the two eyes:. She tried arguing with me that I was not eligible until I reminded her about the 2+ difference thing (which she herself had told me!).
Anyway - in my case it may be have been a combination of periodic steroid use (I’m asthmatic) and type 2 diabetes though there’s some argument there; doc 1 said yes, doc 2 said he didn’t think so. Both confirmed the absence of retinopathy, at least.
BUT, a good friend developed cataracts at about the same time, and she has neither risk factor. She does have a history of toxoplasmosis that has led to some retinal scarring, and severe myopia (-13 or so). It also developed relatively quickly with her - she’d been told she had the beginnings of cataracts (as most people our age do, I suspect) but within a year was booking surgery.
Okay, a slight development. On Monday evening of last week, 5-1/2 weeks after the procedure on my left eye, in that eye I started seeing flashes of light and a very noticeable increase in floaters. The light flashes appeared even when my eyes were closed, so I figured it was some sort of pressure thing. The light flashes tapered off, and I hardly ever see them now. The floaters stayed, particularly one I can only describe as spider-shaped. I’ve always had floaters to some degree but usually not very noticeable. This one’s more vivid and floats in and out of focus. Two days later it was joined by a second one, a solid black dot. The two of them continue to bounce around like the old Pong video game.
But it’s settled down overall, and I waited until my one-month follow-up two days ago to mention it to my doctor. It seems I have experienced a posterior vitreous detachment (PVD). The link says it occurs in 75% of people over 65. I am not quite to 65, I’m early 60s, but my doctor said it does happen in 60% of people my age. (Apparently, many people do not even realize it’s happened to them, the floaters are so transparent.) So it’s generally age-related, but the link does say, “PVD may also occur in cases of cataract surgery, within weeks or months of the surgery.” My doctor says if one eye does it, the the other eye will do it too, it’s just a matter of time. So I’m waiting for that shoe to drop.
Otherwise, my vision has been rendered perfect by the surgeries in July. Even if this PVD was triggered by my cataract surgery, my vision from the cataracts was deteriorating fairly rapidly, so it needed doing. My doctor said while they might not disappear entirely, my brain will filter out the floaters to a large extent, and this is already happening.
One worrying point though is that PVDs can result in retinal detachment, a very serious occurrence. My doctor told me the chance is small, this does not happen to the vast majority of people who experience PVD, but that my eye will need to be monitored. According to the link above, “The risk of retinal detachment is the greatest in the first 6 weeks following a vitreous detachment, but can occur over 3 months after the event.” So I am scheduled to have my eyes dilated and checked again six weeks after the occurrence, which was on August 23.