Can you tell me your experience with cataract surgery?

[Susan Calvin]

I can't really drive at night anymore, and I was just going to haul off and have it done until my ophthalmologist said it had a 90% success rate. I said 90%!! You mean there's a 10% chance of something going wrong?? And I've been thinking about it rather than having it done ever since.

Has anyone here had anything go wrong? Was it correctable? Did your insurance pay for the correction?

Also, I only need the eye in question corrected for distance vision, because I have had natural monocular vision all my life and use one eye for driving and one eye for reading. However, my opthamologist said I would have to wear glasses for driving if I got the regular lens rather than toric, which makes no sense to me since my vision is between 20/30 and 20/40 and I've been allowed to drive without glasses my entire life. I do have a little astigmatism, but not enough to have to have glasses to drive with my natural lens. I also worry that the toric lens probably has to be more precisely placed, which leaves an opening for issues with that. And it costs money out of pocket, of course. I really don't understand why the insurance won't pay for it if you have astigmatism, but it won't.

I'm going to ask my opthamologist these questions, plus more, but I would like to hear your thoughts from the patient's perspective.

Thank you in advance.