Hmmm...I had cataract surgery on both eyes, two days apart, in 2006 or 2007. I asked my eye doc why they did my eyes the same week. He responded that my vision was so bad I had nothing to lose! He was right in that all my adult life I had had 20/480 (20/500 is legally blind) vision in one eye, 20/420-440 in the "good" eye. I wore progressive lenses from the time they first came out (I was in my 30s then), but, even with glasses that degree of nearsightedness and the accompanying astigmatism means you really can't see well, even fairly close.

Following cataract surgery, initially I had 20/20 vision. OMG...buildings have windows and doors, trees have leaves! It's been years, but I still wake up thankful for the vision I now have. During the first year after surgery, my vision settled at 20/40 and 20/60, which is far better than I had ever had with glasses! It's legal for me to drive without glasses for the first time in my life. Because I have a great deal of astigmatism and Meniere's (affected by moving around with uncorrected astigmatism), I wear progressive lenses all the time. I do lots of photography for my job (graphic design), and that has been soooo much easier since surgery! I used to just guess at any distant scenes and even had trouble focussing with things only a few feet away from me. So, for me, cataract surgery has been just one huge blessing and improvement, every waking hour.

One thing that did not happen prior to surgery was loss of ability to discern colors, which many people report. After surgery I reviewed the work I'd done in the months prior to surgery, fearing that I might have cheated clients, but that wasn't the case. For some reason, I've always had a far better ability to "see" colors accurately than most people, and that wasn't affected either by the growing cataracts or since surgery.

I think that cataract surgery, like glasses, is most effective for those who really can't see well at all. When my husband needed to start wearing reading glasses (his distance vision is still nearly perfect), he had nothing but trouble. I think that was because the benefit wasn't all that great, while the glasses were bothersome. He now wears bifocals, but often complains about "how hard it is to see." I remember getting the first pair of no-line progressives: I had absolutely no problem getting used to them, as the benefit of greatly improved distance vision was great. Shoot, I learned then that those big green things hanging over freeways are SIGNS! I've notice the same thing with people who need to wear hearing aids: the ones who have smaller losses have the most trouble, make the most complaints: they just don't gain nearly as much as those of us who live in a nearly silent world without aids.