After cataract surgery do you go back to being able

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

24. A late response to this, but here's my experience.

In first grade I couldn't quite see the blackboard in school, despite being in the front row. Got my first glasses around then. The glasses got progressively thicker and thicker as my vision got worse. When I was 16 I got contact lenses, the hard ones, and that stopped the deterioration of my vision cold. Nice.

Eventually I got soft contacts, which were wonderful for the comfort. After the age of 40 I needed reading glasses. Sigh. I also like to embroider, and I'd typically do that either in the morning before putting in the contacts, or at night after taking them out, because my near vision -- and by near I mean 12 inches or less from my eyes -- was excellent.

Around the age of 50 an eye doctor commented that I was showing the beginnings of cataracts, which distressed me quite a bit, but they simply didn't progress for quite a while. Then, about 13 years later my current eye doctor said, "It's time for cataract surgery." Oh, crap. I'd experienced changes in my vision but didn't realize it was from the sudden growth of cataracts. And at 63, I was a bit on the young side for the surgery.

I called up a friend of mine who was already 80 years old, and she said, "Get the surgery immediately! Trust me on this!"

Every time I went to one of the several appointments leading up to the surgery, every time they looked at my paperwork or at my eyes, they'd sort of gasp. I finally asked, "How bad are they?" The person said, "Well, there are four kinds of cataracts. You have three of them. And they are numbered from 0, none at all, to 4, where you're pretty much blind. You are a 3 in one eye and a 3 plus in the other." Wow. It's a wonder I wasn't walking into walls.

Also, at every appointment, I was at least 10 years younger than any other patient in the room.

So I got the surgery. The eyes were done about two weeks apart, although I recovered so quickly the second one could have been done two days after the first. My distance vision is phenomenal. I feel as if I can read small signs on distant hills. In reality, I test very close to 20-20 in each eye, which I never have done before, not with glasses, not with contact lenses.

I made the choice for good distance vision and I'm happy to use reading glasses for reading or reading this computer screen, or doing my embroidery. I actually need a slightly different correction for each. Michael's is the place for reading glasses. They are incredibly inexpensive there, often only three or four dollars. When I first started needing reading glasses, I'd buy more expensive ones, and learned they wore out or I'd sit on a pair or lose them, and so buying the least expensive ones you can is best.

I tell people that cataracts are the best things that ever happened to my eyes. And even though I was always grateful I was at least born in a century where good eyeglasses were available to me, and later on contact lenses, I see so very much better than ever before. I'll add that the way my vision had gone south right before the surgery, I understand why there was a common acceptance that old people went blind. That doesn't need to happen any more. We are very fortunate to live now.

To answer your question in the OP, if you couldn't read small-print books without glasses before, you probably will need reading glasses for them after cataract surgery. Alternatively, you can opt for lenses (the ones that will be implanted at the time of the surgery) that will let you do that, see up close, and then you'll need some kind of glasses for distance viewing, such as driving your car. Do spend time discussing this with your eye doctor, because it is an important decision. For me, going with good distance vision and using reading glasses was a no-brainer. Your decision could easily be different.

The other thing I'll add is that cataract surgery is by far the most common surgery out there, and is almost invariably a stunning success.