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I saw my eye doctor today. First someone measured my eyes so they can figure out the appropriate replacement lenses to use for my cataract surgery. Then I discussed that, and other aspects of the surgery, with Dr. Lazzara.
@cattitude came with me, for moral support and to help make sure I didn't forget anything important. It's very cold right now (4°F/-15 C), and the buses are running on a Saturday schedule, so we took Lyft both ways. That worked fine except for having to back into a driveway to avoid someone who came the wrong way up the steep, narrow one-way street next to our building. (She blamed her GPS and then claimed not to speak English.)
The measuring was less uncomfortable than I had feared/expected; it mostly involved looking into, and being photographed by, a variety of high-tech machinery. They dilated my eyes a little, but not enough to make my vision blur much.
There will be eye drops both before and after the surgery, including an antibiotic. Dr. Lazzara warned me of the risks of the surgery. The main risk is that if something goes wrong, I could lose my vision. That's objectively scary, but untreated cataracts would eventually have that outcome.
We also discussed whether to use an astigmatism-correcting replacement lens in my right eye. The main reason not to is that I also have Fuchs dystrophy, meaning I may at some point need a corneal transplant, and the astigmatism-correcting lens in front of a non-astigmatic cornea could leave me with effective astigamtism worse than what I now have. However, there's no way of knowing whether I'll need that in a few years, way in the future, or never. The doctor will be operating on the left eye first, which gives me several weeks to decide.
I will need reading glasses even after the surgery on both eyes is done; over-the-counter reading glasses might be sufficient. The tricky bit will be the time between having the first and second eyes operated on; some patients just remove one lens from their eyeglasses, and I may well do that for distance/walking around. (We discussed whether to leave me with just near-sightedness or just far-sightedness, and his explanation for fixing the far-sightedness seemed to make sense at the time, but what I remember of it doesn't, and I may call back and ask about this again.
They will send me home after surgery with a shield to cover the eye in my sleep for a week or so. I asked about wearing it during the day as well and he said that would be fine; given my tendency to absently rub my eyes, this would almost certainly be a good idea.
I saw my eye doctor today. First someone measured my eyes so they can figure out the appropriate replacement lenses to use for my cataract surgery. Then I discussed that, and other aspects of the surgery, with Dr. Lazzara.
@cattitude came with me, for moral support and to help make sure I didn't forget anything important. It's very cold right now (4°F/-15 C), and the buses are running on a Saturday schedule, so we took Lyft both ways. That worked fine except for having to back into a driveway to avoid someone who came the wrong way up the steep, narrow one-way street next to our building. (She blamed her GPS and then claimed not to speak English.)
The measuring was less uncomfortable than I had feared/expected; it mostly involved looking into, and being photographed by, a variety of high-tech machinery. They dilated my eyes a little, but not enough to make my vision blur much.
There will be eye drops both before and after the surgery, including an antibiotic. Dr. Lazzara warned me of the risks of the surgery. The main risk is that if something goes wrong, I could lose my vision. That's objectively scary, but untreated cataracts would eventually have that outcome.
We also discussed whether to use an astigmatism-correcting replacement lens in my right eye. The main reason not to is that I also have Fuchs dystrophy, meaning I may at some point need a corneal transplant, and the astigmatism-correcting lens in front of a non-astigmatic cornea could leave me with effective astigamtism worse than what I now have. However, there's no way of knowing whether I'll need that in a few years, way in the future, or never. The doctor will be operating on the left eye first, which gives me several weeks to decide.
I will need reading glasses even after the surgery on both eyes is done; over-the-counter reading glasses might be sufficient. The tricky bit will be the time between having the first and second eyes operated on; some patients just remove one lens from their eyeglasses, and I may well do that for distance/walking around. (We discussed whether to leave me with just near-sightedness or just far-sightedness, and his explanation for fixing the far-sightedness seemed to make sense at the time, but what I remember of it doesn't, and I may call back and ask about this again.
They will send me home after surgery with a shield to cover the eye in my sleep for a week or so. I asked about wearing it during the day as well and he said that would be fine; given my tendency to absently rub my eyes, this would almost certainly be a good idea.
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