Post by Steve on Oct 2, 2017 12:00:47 GMT -8
It's pretty common to hear people mention cataracts and possible surgery. If you are 65 or older, Medicare helps a lot with the cost but you still have several hundred out of pocket! And that is for the basic replacement lens. A custom lens that should give even better vision is also out of pocket.
The standard comment made by people encouraging you to go ahead with basic surgery is to reassure you that you will see so much better. And probably you will. I didn't, but in keeping with my own stream of diabetic bad luck, I really don't recall any huge improvement. Oh sure, there must have been some, I just don't remember going "¡Caramba! Look how much better things look!" But I had one eye done and now it's time for the other one.
My current situation has me with one eye pretty much useless (after lots of laser work to deal with neovascular retinopathy!) and the other one super sensitive to bright light. I recently visited the specialists to see if I needed more laser work and part of the vision test resulted in my hearing that I had age-related nuclear cataracts. Sounded startling and new, but it's not:
"This is the most common type of age-related cataract, caused primarily by the hardening and yellowing of the lens over time. "Nuclear" refers to the gradual clouding of the central portion of the lens, called the nucleus; "sclerotic" refers to the hardening, or sclerosis, of the lens nucleus."—VisionAware
So I am reluctantly prepared to make an appointment to fix this. The laser doctor dismissed my need for more laser work and finished my exam by casually mentioning that I "would probably see better once the cataract was removed." So yes, I'd like to hope.
Of interest: the word cataract is from the Greek katarhaktes "waterfall, broken water; The blurred vision seemed like looking out through a cascade of water. And so it does.
The standard comment made by people encouraging you to go ahead with basic surgery is to reassure you that you will see so much better. And probably you will. I didn't, but in keeping with my own stream of diabetic bad luck, I really don't recall any huge improvement. Oh sure, there must have been some, I just don't remember going "¡Caramba! Look how much better things look!" But I had one eye done and now it's time for the other one.
My current situation has me with one eye pretty much useless (after lots of laser work to deal with neovascular retinopathy!) and the other one super sensitive to bright light. I recently visited the specialists to see if I needed more laser work and part of the vision test resulted in my hearing that I had age-related nuclear cataracts. Sounded startling and new, but it's not:
"This is the most common type of age-related cataract, caused primarily by the hardening and yellowing of the lens over time. "Nuclear" refers to the gradual clouding of the central portion of the lens, called the nucleus; "sclerotic" refers to the hardening, or sclerosis, of the lens nucleus."—VisionAware
So I am reluctantly prepared to make an appointment to fix this. The laser doctor dismissed my need for more laser work and finished my exam by casually mentioning that I "would probably see better once the cataract was removed." So yes, I'd like to hope.
Of interest: the word cataract is from the Greek katarhaktes "waterfall, broken water; The blurred vision seemed like looking out through a cascade of water. And so it does.