I had my surgery a couple of years ago, and I have to say it changed my life.
Maria is going through the same process in late January 2020, and with any luck, she’ll be done by the end of February.
It’s not really a joyful experience, but I cannot think of any surgical procedure that combines minor risk, quick execution and mind-blowing upside as this one does.
The wait times are a bit longer now as the demand increases with the aging of the OK Boomers. I had to wait about 6 months from referral to getting the surgery done; Maria was expecting an 11-month wait to see the surgeon, but that was cut down to 8 months because of a cancellation.
Maria and I both chose to go with the Tecnis monofocal implants. These are a slight premium over the standard spherical lenses that are covered by our hospital insurance. However, they provide much improved contrast for night driving.
I have astigmatism, and I did not choose the very expensive toric lenses since – although they might have corrected the defect – I would still have needed eyeglasses to read. I decided to just tough it out and wear glasses all the time. Maria doesn’t have astigmatism and she’s already seeing better than I did. To get 20/20 vision I had to wait until I had both eyes done and then got my eyeglasses from the optometrist.
Maria is scheduled for her second surgery at the end of February. The only disadvantage is the long series of eyedrops you have to put in the surgically corrected eye. She’ll just finish eye #1 and then it’s on to the second eye.
If she’s anything like me, she’ll hardly be able to wait until the second eye is fixed. When I had one eye seeing the proper colors, I was acutely aware of the problem with eye #2. Everything I saw with that Eye seemed dim and yellow by comparison.
Well, I held off posting this on the blog until Maria finished her second surgery yesterday. She has been to the surgeon’s office today and all is well. When she finishes the eye drops in a month or so she’ll be good to go. Then she’ll know about what sort of glasses she’ll need.
We are grateful that the weather was good. We had sunny days for her first eye surgery and today a major snowstorm is forecast – but we got into the surgeon’s office and back home before the snow started. You never know at this time of year.
