It's all a blur sometimes... but maybe fixable

[The_Doc_Man]

Well, time to face up to my age catching up to me. Tomorrow, I'll be getting cataract surgery - long overdue - and will probably have trouble reading the forum for a while. Already had the left eye done years ago, but right side didn't develop as quickly. If I don't reply to things right away, it is probably because until my eyes settle down and I get new glasses, I won't be able to read so well. I opted for distance vision because the all-distance vision lenses wouldn't be covered by my insurance. Besides, I've worn reading glasses for years anyway.

 

[KitaYama]

.... but maybe fixable

I hope it's fixable.
I'm new here, but even with my short stay, I know you're talented. will miss you and pray for your recovery and being back as soon as possible.

because the all-distance vision lenses wouldn't be covered by my insurance.

PS: I've heard about your insurance system and how it doesn't cover everything and have never understood that. There are a million or more diseases. Do you have to pick one by one when you sign for an insurance?

 

[Jon]

Best of luck with the op Doc. I've no idea what is involved but I assume it is a very routine surgery nowadays and so pretty safe. How long does it normally take for the eye to settle back down?

 

[NauticalGent]

Wishing you a successful surgery and a speedy recovery Doc...

 

[NauticalGent]

PS: I've heard about your insurance system and how it doesn't cover everything and have never understood that. There are a million or more diseases. Do you have to pick one by one when you sign for an insurance?

Insurance is a service you (are sometimes forced to) buy, much like WiFi. Better service = more money.

That is a gross over-simplification of the system but that is the underlying concept.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

At the moment, things are blurry and I'm touch-typing. I make absolutlely no apologies for anything that the spell checker chooses to barf upon. Suregery is done but, as expected, all is still blurry. Doctor said it went well, but tomorrow's followup is the visit that counts. At the moment, my glasses work on one side, anyway. One thing is likely - I'll never be able to look at an ultraviolet light again. Cataract lenses fluoresce green and I am now double-barreled.

Based on how hard it is to read the web print right now, I'm going to say it is time to limit what I try to do. But you know I had to look. Oh, I could use some of the Windows "accessibility" settings, but right now I'm just going to take a nap or something equally important. One really HARD thing is to find the mouse cursor position because Windows doesn't use a pointer over text. It uses the I-beam cursor in a style that is very thin and thus hard to see. Worse yet, the surgery was on my right eye, but it was the left eye that had the macular degeneration, So I'm reading not only between the lines but between the spots.

I'll visit again tomorrow after the doc does a few measurements. I'll see what kind of a deal I can get on reading glasses.

 

[pbaldy]

Good luck Doc! We need your wisdom and expertise.

 

[Steve R.]

Good Luck.
Likewise my eyes have been getting progressively worse. Unfortunately for me, the eye doctor believes it is too risky for me to have cataract surgery, at this time (macular degeneration). Maybe when I'm blind?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I had macular degeneration in the left eye but after the cataract surgery. Fortunately for me I had the "wet" kind of MD, which mean it was treatable with a drug that is sometimes also used in cancer treatments. Avastin slows/prevents revascularization, which is one of the "wet" conditions for macular problems. The trick is "eyeball injection." The retinologist flooded the eye with an antibiotic so the sclera burned like a mother-something-or-another. While it still burned, he stuck the sclera with a super-thin needle for a numbing agent so that when the REAL needle went in, I wouldn't feel it. Classical sleight of hand / misdirection. But @Steve R. , I understand. My retinologist followed my macula for 18 months before he cleared me for the second surgery because of the risks involved with venous stress..

In case anyone is wondering, right now the only way I can tell if something is spelled badly is the wavy red underscore that pops up when I screw the pooch in typing. For once, the spell checker isn't a total enemy or a total jerk wad. And I have to assume based on what I've seen here, the spell checker doesn't like "macula" or its variants. Either that, or there is a secondary list of lookup words for the spell checker that initially rejects the word and then in an extended lookup, changes its mind.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Glad to see you're back in the saddle again Doc. I'm joining in because I had cataract surgery a couple of years ago and I wanted to talk about the options available these days.

I was using reading glasses before the surgery and still need them after unless I'm in bright light but could have used some correction for distance. Not bad enough to actually have to wear glasses to drive but certainly deteriorating. The standard replacement lenses are essentially clear and don't do any correction so your vision is not changed. You can still use glasses or contacts after the operation. They also offered corrective lenses and I opted for them. They are miraculous (but expensive). Bi and Tri focal lenses have horizontal bands and you look up, down, in the middle depending on whether you are looking far, close, or medium distances. But the lenses they implanted have a spiral with various corrective strengths along the length of the spiral. So you don't consciously pick the spot to look through as you do with multi-focal lenses. Your brain just figures it out. It's a miracle how your brain figures it out but it does. When they first took the bandages off when I was in recovery I opened my eyes and actually saw the spiral for maybe two seconds and then I was seeing clear as a bell. Every place I looked was in focus.

So, the bottom line is. If you are a candidate and are willing and able to spend an extra $3000 per eye, it is well worth the money.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

So, the bottom line is. If you are a candidate and are willing and able to spend an extra $3000 per eye, it is well worth the money.

Had the option but decided to not spend the money on my eyes. Instead, it is mostly directed to the money pit that we live in. The most recent issue is that I have to repair the drain hose for the hot water heater's hybrid heat-pump system now. Not really THAT expensive, but I just feel like i'm being nickel-and-dimed to death by little things. I sometimes feel that I'm being nibbled to death by a Muscovy duck. Then I look at the ducks that have invaded our neighborhood and realize they ARE Muscovy ducks. Then folks wonder why I sometimes chase the nasty things away while screaming like a crazy person.

On the good side, went in for my followup with the eye surgeon. He says everything is where it should be and my uncorrected vision is 20/25 in the right eye, which means driving without glasses. WITH my pre-surgery prescription, I can read from the 4-point type sample on that little sample card that determines the smallest print I can read. So no biggie. All that is left is something that can't be fixed - my dark/light adaptability that pops up when I go from one brightness extreme to the other. But that only lasts for a moment.

In about a month I'll get a new set of eye-glasses and that should be the last prescription I'll need. The artificial lenses won't degrade or change strength any more, so this should be all I need.

 

[Isaac]

Very interesting Doc, I hope things go super well.
My mom just finished cataract surgery (her first), on one eye. They did warn her that, "if you don't need reading glasses now, you probably will after this".......BUT, she feels that they kinda failed to prepare her for "and if you do need reading glasses now, you'll need them ALL THE TIME going forward" (rather than the implication that, if you wear them sometimes now, nothing will change).

Either way, she's ecstatic about having better-than-2020 vision on the far side. She was shocked at how easy the whole procedure was, with virtually no recovery perceptible - just about.

She also declined the "superman" lenses, as the cost didn't seem worth it.

I hope yours goes as well, sorry you have to do it, but will pray for the best possible outcome

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Thanks, Isaac. I had the option for the variable-focus lenses but insurance would not cover them and the money pit is acting up again.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I understand what your mom got. I don't need glasses to drive because I opted for "distance focus" rather than "close-in focus." I did have a choice that would have been equal price but could only pick one or the other. The option I did NOT pick is to make this new lens a "close-in" lens because that would have meant seeing out of one eye at a time - left for driving or right for reading. I'm used to wearing reading classes (see my picture), have worn such since 8th grade. That way, nothing much changes. I just wear glasses for reading and computer screens. Since I have a decent-sized TV screen (65" OLED), I don't need the glasses for TV shows and video-disc formats.

Talking about how easy it was, it took the nursing staff more time to prep me than for the doctor to perform the operation. Once I got on the table and they gave me the don't-give-a-damn shot (a LIGHT tranquilizer of some sort), I didn't care much anyway. Wife picked me up, I found the sofa in front of the big-screen TV, vegged out for a while until things settled down again. But my left eye was 11 years ago and it was almost that easy. The only difference was that this time the eye surgery center had new equipment because Hurricane Ida took their roof. Their stuff got wet and had to be replaced with new. So everything in the room was bright and shiny except for my heinie.

 

[Harrybrigham]

From reading some of the posts about cataract surgery, I think that if they read up about it they would understand what advantages and disadvantages happen. The ability to focus is quite diminished, but the sight becomes clearer.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

After a couple of days, I have noticed one VERY minor but real change: My eyes see the same colors again. Prior to right-eye surgery, if I would close one eye, the right eye saw things yellower than the left eye. Now, no apparent difference. Which probably says something about the color of the cataract.

 

[Cronk]

Or maybe the complementary color (purple) was being filtered out.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

No way to know now, but I'll mention it to the eye surgeon in my followup visit in a couple of days. I have no doubt he's come across color defects before.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

1. Talked to the eye surgeon today on the 1-week follow-up. He confirms that cataracts often have a yellowish color to them. He says I'm doing great, no aberrations to report, all is where it should be, and he reduced my eye-drop schedule significantly.

2. But of course the other shoe now has to drop. Wife had knee replacement surgery Tuesday, is home now. She is going to be terribly shaky for the next several days and will need me to accompany her when she tries to walk. However, we did this 16+ months ago with the other leg so I know more or less what to expect. So my time to post is again restricted to times when she is napping and I'm not. But the surgeon said the operation went well. The reason she had as much pain as she did was because she had no cartilage left in the right knee. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Bone on bone. (Grind, grind, grind...) Oh, well, the left knee was an improvement eventually, so this should help her tremendously.

 

[Galaxiom]

My wife had here first eye done this morning. Other side is next week.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Good luck to her, G. I suspect it will be a good result. The odds are strongly in favor of it. I'm over the biggest annoyance - having to wear the plastic eye-shield at night for a week until the 2nd post-op visit. Well, that and the 4 x daily set of eye drops, also now diminished after the 1-week visit. I'm mobile again, my vision without eye-glasses is 20/25, and in Louisiana, you can drive with 20/45.