Thinking of getting just one eye done, which means locking in -6 myopia
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I'm reluctant to move forward with cataract surgery on both eyes. I have 20/25 and J1 best corrected vision, don't mind the halos on lights (they're pretty, actually -- rainbows) and have good contrast sensitivity. The risk/benefit balance just doesn't seem to favor moving ahead. My main complaint is presbyopia and a right eye with so much astigmatism (8.25 cyl) that many labs can't make my glasses, The right lens ends up very thick even with the highest-index material, and right-eye vision is useless without glasses.
I find my left eye vision without glasses to be very useful, even though it is -5 sph, -2.25 cyl. I love that I can see tiny detail at 6 to 8 inches. I don't notice the astigmatism at all in the left. I just wish I could do close work with both eyes contributing. The right eye image is so smeared-up and messy, I generally close the right eye when I take my glasses off. The uncorrected right-eye vision is really a joke. I'm amazed glasses can fix it.
If it did just the right eye, I would have to leave it almost as myopic as the left eye, in order to comfortably wear glasses. One can tolerate up 1 diopter of difference in glasses prescription, or a little more, but not a lot more. The image size would be too different, they tell me. So, if I did just one eye I'd be locking in -5 or -6 myopia for the rest of my life (I'm 73 and healthy). That doesn't sound bad to me. I have no dreams of being glasses free. I find my high myopia vision in the left very useful for close work.
The cataract density is rated 2+, with no discernible change over the past 12 months. My sister absolutely had to have surgery by my current age, while my brother is six years older and has no plans for cataract surgery. So, genetics is no guide as to how long I might go without surgery if I chose to wait.
What do you think? Any drawbacks to doing just one eye that I haven't thought of?
I have lined up a top surgeon in Canada who has a Zeiss monofocal toric aspheric aberration-free IOL with high enough cyl to fully correct my astigmatism. My doctor here in the US would do the follow up care. You can't get more than 6 cyl in the US and I need about 10 cyl.
1 like, 18 replies
jimluck
Posted
The other 0.1% of my waking life is the dozen or so times a day I look over my glasses or take them off to use my -6.0 natural left eye vision for near. It's only 0.1% of the time, but I wouldn't give it up. It's very convenient. I'd feel handicapped to be permanently -0.75. To me, that's being "near blind."