# Eye surgery - opinions requested **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 28, 2012, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eye-surgery-opinions-requested/636076 "2012-09-28T00:34:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eye-surgery-opinions-requested/636076/121 "2013-01-16T18:11:27Z")
Thanks; that’s pretty much what I had guessed. It took about 4 weeks to schedule the first surgery, so I’ll probably wait until I actually notice any decreased vision in my left eye. Again, I think I went into this whole thing too soon. As it turns out, my original question, regarding which lens to choose for the replacement, turns out to have been irrelevant – I would have had the same problems regardless of which one I chose. I could probably have just gotten the plain vanilla monofocus lens and saved myself the cost of the fancy one. ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eye-surgery-opinions-requested/636076/122 "2013-01-16T19:09:00Z")
My surgeon told me that an eye needed to be able to be corrected to less than 20/30 in order for them to do the surgery. I was concerned since one eye was signifigantly worse than the other the they would only correct the one eye but since the better eye was at 20/30 I had both done. I did not worry that my eyesight would casue me to walk in front of a car or anything like that but i couln’t read road signs at all so if I didn’t know where I was going I was in trouble. I went on a trip just before my first dr appt and I was stunned at how little I could see at a distance. My cataracts also progressed very quickly as in November I had both eyes corrected to 20/30 and by April my left eye was almost completely blurred even with the previously corrected lenses. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eye-surgery-opinions-requested/636076/123 "2013-01-16T21:02:32Z")
> [@adhemar](#): > > …I did not worry that my eyesight would casue me to walk in front of a car or anything like that but i couln’t read road signs at all so if I didn’t know where I was going I was in trouble… When my vision started to get really bad, I had some remarkable experiences. I was about to cross a road which had a tall building next to it. The building’s shadow was across the road. I saw a car coming and when it went into the shadow, from my perspective it _literally_ disappeared. A second or two later when it came out of the shadow, it was as if it was being reconstituted from thin air. I just happened to see all this at a moment when I wasn’t endangered. Had things been a little different and I hadn’t seen the car before it went into the shadow, I might have been hit. Also, it was a very powerful warning of just how bad my vision had gotten. As it was, I stood there for a bit to enjoy the experience of watching cars vanish and reappear. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eye-surgery-opinions-requested/636076/124 "2013-01-17T02:54:05Z")
Now, that’s scary. In how much time did it go from OK to cars vanishing? Days? Weeks? Months? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eye-surgery-opinions-requested/636076/125 "2013-01-17T03:07:39Z")
> [@MLS](#): > > Now, that’s scary. In how much time did it go from OK to cars vanishing? Days? Weeks? Months? I had something called “rapid onset” cataracts. I went from normal vision to being no longer able to drive and not even safe crossing the street in about 6 months. That compares to ten or twenty years for normal cataracts. I was terrified that I was going blind – I had no advance alert from an eye doc that sooner or later I would need the surgery. While I had no idea what the problem was, I did know that all the other kinds of progressive blindness were pretty much incurable. So I was especially stupid – I didn’t go to a doc for much longer than I knew there was a problem because I was afraid of what they’d tell me. I also drove waaayyyy longer than I should have – I had to drive to get to work, and I was afraid I’d kill somebody. I developed a strategy. I tailgated the car in front of me. I could see the brake light coming on so I could stop, but I probably wouldn’t see pedestrians coming in from the side, so I figured if I tailgated no one would be stupid enough to try fitting between me and the car ahead. It worked, but in retrospect it was incredibly stupid. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eye-surgery-opinions-requested/636076.md?page=6)