Cataract surgery

I had cataract surgery on both my eyes this week. I wouldn’t have even known I had cataracts except that I see (ha) my eye doctor twice a year to check on my glaucoma, and they’ve been monitoring their progress over the past couple of years.

My only real symptom was that I had trouble driving at night — and it was significant enough to where I basically had stopped doing that completely. Oncoming headlights were like huge blinding walls of blurry light, and I was having more and more trouble seeing the stripes in the road and the curbs. I was willing to chalk this up to “you are extremely nearsighted, have really really awful floaters, and are getting older.” I was surprised when my doctor told me cataracts were forming.

My eye doctor said that even though mine were only at a 1.5 to 2 on a scale of zero to four, there was no reason to wait until they got really bad, if I wanted to go ahead with surgery.

I got a second opinion from a different eye surgeon. He said he would not operate on me, because the cataracts weren’t bad enough yet. He wanted me to wait another ten years so that I could take the risks that came along with surgery when I was older, instead of when I was still working and presumably a productive member of society. When I asked what I was supposed to do in the meantime, while my eyes were getting progressively worse and I couldn’t drive, he didn’t really have a good answer.

So I went ahead with the surgery. I opted to include a not-covered-by-insurance laser surgery add-on. Even though it was a pretty big additional out of pocket expense, there were two upsides that made it worth it: It would completely correct my distance vision to 20/20, eliminating the need for any distance vision glasses (I do need reading glasses, which was expected), and the laser option meant less manual pulling and tugging on my eyeball, which would reduce the not-insignificant risk of a retinal tear.

My surgeon knew I was really nervous so he had the anaesthesiologist give me a half dose of feel good drugs while I was still in pre-op, to lessen any anxiety I would have had. Excellent move on his part. I was awake and aware for the entire surgery, but, as promised, just didn’t really care what they were doing. Nothing hurt, it all seemed like a weird dream. I only felt some slight pressure.

And I could not be happier with the results. I see 20/20 beyond my fingertips, and I can drive at night again!

Here is bionic eye #1, completed! It was extremely disorienting having one bad eye and one fixed eye (which at the time I took this photo was still dilated and blurry). Awaiting those new superpowers to kick in…

And two days later, bionic eye #2 was installed! Pre op, post op. I was still groggy from the anaesthesia.

My Halloween costume this year was “Lady Who Sees 20/20 In Both Eyes.” It was kinda expensive… probably will wear it every day to get my money’s worth.

One unexpected and distressing side effect of getting these cataracts out of my eyes is that colors look VERY off in natural light. There is a slightly dimmed low contrast blue/purple cast to everything now.

Example: sitting outside yesterday afternoon, with one repaired eye and one old eye, working on crochet. The yarn is a kind of rusty orange (photo on left below). My old eye saw the color correctly. My new eye saw the yarn as magenta/lavender (photo on right that I color corrected to make it match what my new eye sees).

Interestingly, my new eye saw the PHOTO of the yarn as the correct orange color. And my new eye also sees the yarn as orange in indoor LED light.

So I guess my new eyes are picking up LOTS more blue wavelengths in natural light.

People told me that after surgery, colors would look AMAZING! I would have no idea what I’d been missing. I wasn’t so sure about this; I’ve always had great color acuity and I always score 100% on color tests.

Well…. Maybe I was right. I’m real unhappy about losing the lovely golden glow that life seemed to have.

I’m trying not to freak out about this yet as I JUST had surgery and it takes a while for everything to kind of settle. My surgeon said my brain would adjust. I hope it does because otherwise I don’t know what this is going to do to my art.