*Cataract Surgery on an Eye Doctor

I’m an eye doctor (ophthalmologist), and I want to share my personal experience with cataract surgery. It’s funny how our eyes can change without us really noticing. I didn’t realize my vision was getting blurry and colors looked different until my yearly eye check-up. My ophthalmologist told me I had pretty bad cataracts and needed to get them fixed. As an eye doctor myself, I knew there are a few ways to fix cataracts:

1. Replace the cloudy lenses (cataracts) with a single-focus lens for distance vision (or, less commonly, near vision)
2. Use “monovision” intra-ocular lenses – one eye for distance, one for close-up
3. Get special multifocal lenses that work for both near and far vision
4. Too much astigmatism may require a toric intra-ocular lens be used in the above 3 situations.

Let me break down the pros and cons:

1. Distance lenses give you the best far-away vision and cost less. But you’ll need glasses for reading and close-up work such as computers and cell phones.
2. Monovision lets you do most things without glasses. It’s cheaper, but about 1 in 3 people don’t like having their eyes focused differently. It’s great if you’ve used monovision contact lenses before and liked them. Almost certainly you will be happy with monovision intra-ocular lenses.
3. Multi-focus lenses sound perfect – you can see near and far without glasses! But they’re not quite as clear as single-focus lenses, and they cost more. Some people see rings around lights at night, so they’re not great for night drivers.

Choosing the monovision option was easy because I’d used monovision contacts before. The doctor set my left eye for close-up and my right eye for distance. Later on, I ordered some driving glasses too, just in case. The cataract surgery was quick and painless. The surgeon used eye drops to numb my eye and gave me medicine to help me relax. The drugs must have worked since there is no memory of the surgery itself! I did my left eye first, then the right a few months later. One cool thing I noticed after surgery was how much better I could see colors. I found some white Legos mixed in with my yellow ones – I couldn’t tell them apart before and did not know it at the time!

Getting cataract surgery was amazing. Now I understand why my patients were so happy after their surgeries. It’s great to see the world clearly again!