Cataract surgery now is a piece of cake. Get it over with, the sooner the better, it will only get worse. As soon as insurance will approve it. Just pick a good doctor with advanced equipment. It's mostly automated now. That's my opinion. If it's like here they insist someone come with you, spend the whole time there (no cab rides to and from), drive you home and deposit you in your house. Of course they can't check everything, but they do check if someone is there sitting in the waiting room for you the whole time. I had an available friend at that time. If it happened again I might hire a male escort. lol I remember as a little kid sitting in my grandmother's house one time listening to her talk about a relative who had cataract surgery. He had to spend time in the hospital with sandbags weighting down his head so he couldn't move. Then there were the coke bottle glasses afterwards. I wonder how many people lived with cataracts the rest of their lives back then, eventually blind. Maybe not as many got cataracts as now. I don't remember any relatives of that generation ever having it done, but most of them lived out of state.
Every year when I see my ophthalmologist she tells me I'm not at the point where I need the surgery, but a year & a half ago she said it's now located in the center of one eye, which is the worse place it can be. (She told me that steroids can cause that, although Ive not been on them.) I'm gonna raise this with her next visit,since it seems to be getting worse. Regarding needing a ride: when I was living outside of DC, I hired a service to accompany me for my first colonoscopy.
I may not understand how the billing works completely, but in my case the surgeon was the one who decided whether you needed the procedure done, not my optometrist. The optometrist just did a referral. May be different if your doctor is already an ophthalmologist, and qualified to decide. It could be they need to send in concrete data, like an old versus new prescription, and she knows best. The surgeon won't recommend it if it's not covered by insurance. I don't know who pays for his exam if the surgeon doesn't recommend it after a referral.
I think a lot of the medical measurements are subjective. If I recall correctly, my ophthalmologist told me that there is a scale that is used to document the extent of the clouding, but it's subjective. My doctor knows what her "5" means when she documents the progression, but her "5" might be another doctor's "4". One would think they could objectively quantify the degree of opacity. Heck, I pay extra to have a picture taken of the back of my eyeballs. I don't know if my anecdotal/subjective opinion could override her observations. I do know that the cataract over the center of my eye first appeared 2 exams ago, and had not progressed to the point of causing her concern at my most recent exam (3 months ago.)
My eyes seem to be getting worse by the day. I need to make an appointment with the ophthalmologist to see if anything can be done. I'm glad your procedure helped you, Nancy.
I am now having some trouble driving at night, which is much of the winter here. I saw an ophthalmologist a few years ago with floaters and such, and he told me that when it affects your driving, it is time to have the cataracts done. The optometrist I usually see has been encouraging me to get the cataracts done soon, but they do it with a diamond blade instead of a laser as they claim it heals faster. I only know one person who had it done with a blade and they were not happy with the result. Everyone I have talked to who has has it done by laser is happy with the results. My brother had his done at some clinic in Pennsylvania and he is delighted with his results. He even had trifocal lenses put in so he wears no glasses at all. I think it cost him a good bit though over and above what his insurance would pay. An aunt had hers done in the 1970s and was nearly completely blind afterward.
If your eye doctor is like my hearing doctor and most small animal vets I've encountered recently, and you try to override her, she may double-down on her opinion. You have to use finesse, try to play dumb.
Night driving was the thing that made the surgery absolutely necessary for me. Especially if it was raining at night. I would have had to give it up soon otherwise. I think using the blade method may depend more on the skills and experience of the surgeon, than the laser method would. Just my guess. All I know is the laser made a nice neat clean circle. The optometrist told me so. They have a new lens now where some adjustments can be made AFTER the surgery. I just got the single vision ones. I don't mind wearing progressive glasses. Tried contacts one time for several years and didn't like all the trouble.
I've never been tempted to try contacts. I just went to the store, and noticed that under most lighting conditions I can see those door opener markings. I guess if the sun is more in my face (as it is in the afternoon when I park my car in my driveway), it dilates my pupils a little and does not provide light on the mirror. I can't imagine that cataracts ebb & flow. My eye doctor was asking me about night vision and the glare of headlights, and I told her that in suburbia there's lots of ambient light (it's easy to not realize that your headlights are not on), but where I now drive there are no street lights, so I'm in the darkness of the woods when a car's headlights come around the corner and hit me in the face. Sometimes I have to slow down and make sure I'm near the shoulder...but I'm not really "blinded." That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.
That's a subject in and of itself. It used to be illegal to blind people with your high beams, yet today's standard low beams are many times brighter than that. I feel bad when other drivers flash their high beams at me thinking mine are on when they're not.