What made you decide to go ahead and schedule your cataract surgery?

[raccoon]

What made you decide to go ahead and schedule your cataract surgery?

Or did your doctor tell you it was time?

[intrepidity]

1. Doc rec

Best.surgery.EVER.

[Srkdqltr]

2. When doc said.. do it! I was finding it hard to drive.

[onecaliberal]

3. Yes, and wow. I could see immediately after.

Bummed I waited so long.

[DURHAM D]

4. My doctor said it was time.

Had trouble seeing at night.

Regret it greatly. I am the only person I know who had complications. One eye is permanently fuzzy.

[3Hotdogs]

13. 1% have complications

Sorry you are one of the 1%.


I hope it can be fixed.

[DURHAM D]

14. Thanks but there is no fix.

[marybourg]

18. Have you gotten a second opinion on that?

Preferably from a teaching hospital?

[marybourg]

5. If you're on Medicare, you must not be correctable

to better than 20/50, or meet a few other standards for Medicare to pay for it. When you do meet the standards, why would you not go ahead? Cataracts used to be the leading cause of adult blindness before surgery was perfected.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. When my vision was deteriorating thanks to cataracts,

I understood why it was simply understood and accepted that old people would lose their vision. I am so glad that is no longer the case.

I had my cataract surgery at age 63, somewhat on the young side. It's hard to express what a huge difference it made in my vision. These days, when I wake up in the morning and look across the room, I can actually read the clock. Wow. That's something I had never been able to do. When I was in first grade I could not see the blackboard properly, even though I was very short and sat in the front row. I got glasses that next summer, and I have always been grateful I lived in a century where things like glasses were possible. Several hundred years earlier I'd have just lived a life of limited vision.

I'd known for a couple of decades that I was growing cataracts, and when my eye doctor said It's time for the surgery, I called up a friend of mine who was in her 80s to ask for advice. My first thought was to delay the surgery a couple of years so that Medicare would pay more. My wonderful friend said, "Poindexter! Get the surgery!" She was right, and I have zero regrets. Yes, it cost me a lot, but I could also (with a bit of struggling and money juggling) afford it.

The other interesting thing was that every single doctor appointment I went to I was by at least a decade the youngest person there. Again, I was only 63. All of the older people had put off getting the cataract surgery they desperately needed because they remembered what it had been like for their own parents, some thirty or more years earlier, and didn't understand how much cataract surgery had changed over the decades.

So, yeah, if you've been told it's time for cataract surgery, get it done.

[in2herbs]

6. I waited to qualify for Medicare. nt

[AllaN01Bear]

7. loosing my eyesight.

did them in the height of covid . place was only taking ppl w preexisting conditions .

[El Supremo]

8. I retired and had the time to do it.

Nothing to do with insurance. I couldn't see well out of one eye.

I had the other eye done 5years later. I wonder if I should have had the astigmatism correction too. I now correct that with distance glasses.

[lark]

9. My vision in my right eye couldn't be corrected enough for me to see well.

The vision in my left eye was going as well, but I could still see ok through it. Driving was getting problematic for areas I didn't know well. I had no choice but to have the surgery or quit driving and I'm far too young for that. It's been great to finally be without glasses after 60 years of wearing them every waking moment. Woohoo!!!

[Diamond_Dog]

10. Doc recommended it

Best surgery ever. Easy peasy and great results.

[Nay]

11. I couldn't see at night worth a crap. I refused to drive at night. Plus, I couldn't wear

sunglasses; for some reason, the cataracts had trouble with the polarizing or something.

I had both eyes done -- one the first month, the other the second month. I love how I can see like a champ now.

[elleng]

12. Annoying halos during night driving.

[ShazzieB]

15. Same here!

When I try to drive at night, everything looks like this:



I haven't had the surgery yet; I'm scheduled for January. My eye doctor keeps telling me my eyes aren't "that bad" yet, but I could go ahead and do it if I want, and I do not have the patience to sit around and wait for my eyes to get worse and worse.

Fortunately, I have insurance that will cover it now, xo I don't have to wait.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

16. I'd been slowly growing cataracts for a couple of decades.

Then, there were some changes in my vision that I did not connect to cataracts, until my regular eye doctor said, "Yep, the cataracts have gotten to the point they need removing." I was only 62 years old, and my first thought was to wait until Medicare. I consulted an 80 year old friend of mine who said, "Poindexter! Get the surgery! You won't regret it, trust me."

She was right. I did have health care from where I worked, which covered most of the cost. What I paid was well worth it. I also had several conversations with the various eye doctors about exactly what kind of implant to have. The most interesting part was that every time I saw another person about my eyes, they'd either look at the paperwork or look into my eyes and go, "Wow." I finally asked someone, just how bad were my cataracts? I was told that I actually had 3 of the 4 different kinds of cataracts. And on a scale of 1 to 4, one eye was a 3 and the other was a 3 plus. It's amazing I wasn't walking into walls.

Cataract surgery was the very best thing that ever happened to my eyes. I CAN SEE!!!! When I wake up in the morning I can look at the clock across the room and read the time. What a wonderful thing! I wore contact lenses for years, both hard and soft, and there's no longer the issue of my eyes being too tired for the lenses. My distance vision is phenomenal, and I feel as if I can read small signs on distant hills.

So, if your doctor tells you it's time, go for it.

[demosincebirth]

19. I canceled my surgery today, I have vertigo. What an awful feeling!