One eye at a time

I wore contact lenses.  So when one eye was done, I simply did not put a lens in that eye but still wore the lens in the other eye.

They have  your persecription.  Perhaps your doctor could give you a soft lens to wear in the eye not being operated on?  They have your perscription they should be able to sell you a lens or two at a cheap price to wear until both eyes are done?

But maybe learning to wear contacts is not the best answer.  I'd bet they could take the one lens out and replace it with a fake glass one or not replact it all just leave it out as you say.

Personally, I just removed the lens in my glasses for the "new" eye, left the lens in for the other "old" eye which had not yet been repaired. (The second eye was done two weeks later, so it was a short term issue).  However ... this didn't work great, as my two eyes didn't seem to want to work "together" in quite the way they had before.  It just felt disorienting.  So I just went without glasses, using my "new" eye and closing or ignoring my blurry (without the glasses) "old" eye.  This worked ok - well enough that I did a 150 mile drive after two weeks (it just turned out to be necessary to do the drive, long story).  Not ideal, but workable.  My vision was very bad all my life, so I was pretty near a worst case scenario for vision imbalance post-surgery on the first eye.  So yeah, it's an issue, just have to do the best you can with it (and hopefully it's short term, as mine was).

I have just had to have new specs because my 'good' eye has developed more astigmatism [cataract was done in 1992] my other eye now needs doing urgently.  I was going to ask if they could find a compatible implant, so that I don't need to change my specs immediately.  I'm sure they can.

I was extraordinarily farsighted before I had my surgery, so the surgeon did my left eye first then a week later did the right eye.  He felt I would be too handicapped to go any longer between the two surgeries.  You are right, you won't be able to wear your glasses, unless you wear a patch over your new, improved eye.  You probably also won't be able wear your glasses with one lens popped out either.   I tried that - it doesn't work.  It has to do with the distance of the eyeglass lens from your unoperated eye.  I made the mistake of trying to do my 5 mile power walk 3 days after my left eye was operated on and before my right eye had the procedure.  My depth perception was so off, that I misstepped and broke my ankle.  I didn't realize how handicapped I was.  I had to have my right eye done with a broken ankle - Ugh!  So my advice to you is to get the two eyes done as close to together as your surgeon feels is safe and don't go for a walk or a run until both eyes are working together.  Good luck.

One more thing.  I couldn't wear a contact lens in the one eye waiting to be operated on because I had to go 8 weeks without any lenses in my eyes at all  before I could even have the surgery.  Wearing one days before the second surgery would have set me back.

Sue it's difficult I wear a contact lense in

my bad eye I suffer from dry eyes so can only wear it for eight hours maximum , I have glasses with the lense taken out this is not ideal . I paid over 200 pounds for new varifocals which I can't wear as my brain just won't accept the imbalance it gives me double vision and dizziness . When I can't wear my lense to be fair my vision is fine with one blurred and one very good eye , but if I'm shopping or overusing my good eye I can feel it hurting through straining .

I've just received a formal apology from the hospital as I suffered a bleed during surgery due to an error my recovery was slower than normal , hoping I can have my other eye done at a reduced rate , I do feel none of this is straight forward and was not fully explained pre op .

I don't know what country you are in (its an international site), but in some places they have begun to do surgery on both eyes the same day (using different operating rooms and instruments for each eye to limit the risk that if some rare problem occured due to infection or something that its unlikely it would happen to both eyes). There are benefits to getting both eyes done at the same time.

 Various issues regarding insurance reimbursements apparently have held that back in the US, but it happens here also. I went abroad to get surgery and had the 2nd eye done the next day, just after the bandage came off the first eye. 

If you have a gap between the two surgeries. The best option would be to wear a contact lens on the other eye if you can tolerate it. I don't know when you gave up wearing contact lenses, but they've made great progress the last several years in coming up with comfortable soft disposable lenses, including ones that correct for astigmatism. (you mentioned gas permable contacts which makes me suspect you might have worn those in the past, and the usual reason is that they correct better for astigmatism).

Unfortunately taking 1 lens out of your existing eye glasses wouldn't work well either because glasses either magnify or reduce the size of an image.  When there is too much of a difference in the lens powers required between two eyes, including needing 0 power in one eye ( a condition called anisometropia), it leads to the probelm of  aniseikonia. Aniseikonia is a difference in perceived size of an image between two eyes, and if the difference is two great then your brain can't merge the 2 images into 1 result.

Different people can tolerate different amounts of aneisokonia, but if you are "very very short-sighted", i.e. a prescription of over a few diopters, its unlikely you would tolerate using glasses where you took out once lens.

It may be that you could more easily tolerate not wearing glasses at all after surgery. If operated on eye has good vision,  your brain  might be able to tune out the blur from your very short sighted eye. Or it might not unfortunately, it may leave your brain confused which image to use unless you wore a patch over the bad eye (which most people wouldn't wish to do).