Trying to quickly wrap my head around my options

Greetings,

(Warning: long-winded background…)

I'm a 52yo guy in the US who was recently diagnosed with cataracts - both eyes; developed over the course of several months; no real clouding, but enough distortion that I get triple vision and blurring that isn't correctable with glasses. The triple vision is more obvious at night with street lights. I have pretty-strong myopia (around -9, prior to the last ophthalmologist's altering my prescription before he actually detected the cataracts), but oddly-enough no notable prior astigmatism. I've worn prescription glasses full-time ever since I was nine.

Due to my prescription (and the ease at which a lot of optometrists have screwed it up), I've gone to ophthalmologists for years. One thing that I couldn't help but notice is that most of my fellow patients have always been (well) in their 70s or older. Realistically, this generally means that the doctors are more used to dealing with patients who are at a different point in their lives. Even though I think that I've selected one of the top eye surgeons in my area, I therefore still want to ensure that we're both going into this with the appropriate perspective.

All that out of the way, I want to make sure that I understand what's being proposed, and what my options are before the preop appointment later this month. As I understand it, my doctor is currently considering using the TECNIS ZCB00 for both eyes. He leans heavily toward monovision, but I'm supposed to wear a contact for a few days before making that determination. (Surgeries are only about a week apart.) He hasn't suggested the Symfony or a multifocal lens at this point. (I get the feeling that most doctors in the US shy away from these, due to bad experiences with first-generation multifocal lenses.)

From what I've gleaned from here and elsewhere, here's what I think that I understand about single-focus lenses and extended focus lenses (please correct me if I'm wrong):

Single-focus:

• Sharp focus at a specific point in one of the three ranges (distance, intermediate, or near)
• Low incidence of night-time effects (halos, rings, etc.), although some edge effects can occur.
• With monovision: each eye will be in focus in a smaller region somewhere within one of the three ranges. However, the remaining range (usually near) will definitely require glasses to accommodate. Even for the other two ranges, there will be distances that aren't in clear focus with either eye. In addition, depth perception will be compromised, since the focus of the two eyes won't likely overlap.
• With mini-monovision: most of the above is true, except that the individual eye focus ranges overlap at some point, which gives better depth perception at the overlap points. This comes at the expense of a smaller total combined focus range (read: glasses likely required for part or all of two of the three ranges).

Extended range (specifically Symfony):

• Focus at a broader range of distances, covering all of one of the three ranges and part of the adjacent one. Focus not quite as sharp as a single-focus lens at the best point of focus (?).
• Higher incidence of night-time effects (halos, rings, etc.) than with single-focus. These are reduced in severity compared with the old multifocus (really bifocal) lenses, but still show up. Issues with halos, rings, etc. aren't noticeable during the day (?). Unlike multifocus, extended range lenses do not have issues with reduced contrast, and do not interfere with visual field testing (?).
• Due to the extended focus range, "monovision" is more like mini-monovision, except that 2+ of the ranges are covered by the combined focus, and there's more range that overlaps between both eyes.

What am I missing? Overall, it seems like the big choices are related to focus coverage versus night-time effects.

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