This is for the doctors that replied earlier.
Man I wish I’d have found this thread sooner! I am early 50’s and had my first cataract lens surgery yesterday in my right eye, and I’m right eye dominant. My vision is really bad, I am very nearsighted. I have a very slight astigmatism in my right eye and a very large astigmatism in my left eye. My right lens was really bad. So cloudy I couldn’t identify a person sitting 6’ away from me. Also from the cloudiness of the lens the layer below it was cloudy and would need some laser work to clean up the cloudiness after the lens was changed.
When I went for my surgical consult my surgeon suggested 3 options. He could set one for near and one for far, both for far or the panoptix lens which “does it all”. Said my eyes would tolerate all options. I am an active hunter, shooter, carpenter and cabinet maker so tape measures are part of my life and I work outside almost every day summer and winter. Also went over costs. Insurance only covers the standard lens, if I went with the toric it would cost me $1,600 per eye and if I did the toric panoptix it was going to be $3,000 per eye.
I did a bunch of research (what I could find online
) and spoke to the surgeon again and decided on the panoptix. It’s the newest one that has the clareon lens. I asked specific questions about using optics such as scopes (especially about being able to see the crosshairs as I could not see them at all in my current state), binos and spotters and even asked about how the focal length of the tubes would react with each lens. I am pretty sure the surgeon is not a hunter, but said any of them should work. He also mentioned he had just did another fellow about my age that went with the panoptic and was very pleased with them. I asked what his real world experience was with the panoptix lens and severe halos and such and he said that was actually pretty low but assured me there would be some and that some people deal with it better then others. He did explain that they all came with trade offs.
My surgery was less than 24 hours ago and I can see again out of that eye! It’s not perfect yet, but I can see. Noticed within a few hours how much brighter and more vivid colors were. Our leaves are in almost peak fall colors right now and man I didn’t know what I was missing! I can read the words on the tv now from across the room, they aren’t perfectly clear, but I can read them now which is something I couldn’t do since I was a very young kid. Will this continue to get clearer as the eye heals from the surgery?
The surgeon said he was able to clean up the layer below the lens with the laser but I might need some more laser work on it when the lens settles next week or so. Other eye has a cataract as well but not nearly as bad as the first eye. (The surgery for my second eye is about 3 weeks from now.) My eye is still very dilated and I am seeing halos around point source lights at night. I also noticed it was pretty hard to see last night with the lights off when I was heading to bed. I experimented with covering each eye as I went to bed.
I did not even think to ask about low light performance of each lens when I had my page full of questions before picking which lens to go with. Did I mess up by choosing the multifocal lens? If so should I go with the eyehance for my left eye? Or is it just better to stay with the same panoptix I have in my right? He said my eyes were healthy otherwise.
The difference I noticed after dark last night heading to bed, could that just have been because my eye is so dilated? It was a pretty significant difference between the new lens eye and the old lens eye as to navigating through the house with no lights on except for a few nightlights here and there.
I was the youngest person in his office by a long shot. So naturally one of my questions was why was this happening so early in my life. He asked if I was a welder, and I am not but I have done quite a bit (keeping my snow removal equipment working) and in my younger years was a welders helper on the pipeline. Said the type of cataracts I had were typical of welders. So being a jack of all trades and doing whatever you have to do to make ends meet can hurt you later in life. As young men we don’t take the precautions or worry about what is this going to do to me when I’m 50+. Moral of the story is wear your safety glasses, welding helmets, shields, sunglasses, etc!
Thanks for taking the time to read this and any opinions or suggestions you can offer. Sorry for the epic post.
Jim