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The hearing aid thread got me to thinking about vision restoration, so here goes.
My eye doctor had been telling me the last few visits that I had cataracts. Finally, about 3 months ago she said I was a 3+ and really needed to do something about it. I'd been very disappointed in my performance at the range in the last couple of years. It's very frustrating to not be able to shoot better than a 4" group at 100 yards. With my wife going to work for the school district we suddenly had much better insurance coverage than before, so I decided to explore the possibilities. I found that Medicare would cover some of the surgery. It covers the surgery and basic, non-prescription lenses. That kind of surgery clears up your vision, but you still need bifocals for correction both near and far. If you want prescription lenses for either near or far only it's an additional $3000 or so. Bifocal lenses are roughly an extra $6000. I chose the $3000 package, with my wife's insurance picking up a big chunk of that. I would need glasses only for reading and close work, pretty much how I did things already.
Surgery takes about 15 minutes per eye. They do one at a time and let the first one heal about 3 weeks before doing the other eye. It's not painful at all, and you're sedated during the procedure. You can't drive for 24 hours, but after that you resume normal activities.
My experience with the first eye was a real "eye-opener"...literally. Suddenly the world was a lot brighter and a lot sharper. What was really annoying was the difference in performance between the two eyes. Everything in the other eye was slightly blurry and yellow, like I had on yellow aviator glasses. Everything in the treated eye looked sharp at a distance and almost blue. I couldn't wait to get the second eye done. Wow, what a difference!
I got the second eye done last week and I'm very pleased. I haven't been to the range yet, but I'm very optimistic that my performance will improve dramatically. Looking through a scope I can see a huge improvement. Iron sights I will have to reserve judgement on until I can actually do some live fire. But I will be at least no worse off with open sights.
The one thing that might be considered a drawback is that I can now see a couple of floaters in my right eye that I couldn't see before. I knew they were there because my eye doctor commented on them. One is right in my field of vision when sighting a firearm, and I think it may be the root cause of my deteriorating shooting performance. I talked to another eye surgeon yesterday who is pretty sure he can help me with that issue. We're going to wait another 3 months to let my current surgeries heal and for conditions to resolve before deciding what to do.
My main point here is that my vision was just like my hearing, in that I didn't know how bad it had gotten until I had it corrected.
My eye doctor had been telling me the last few visits that I had cataracts. Finally, about 3 months ago she said I was a 3+ and really needed to do something about it. I'd been very disappointed in my performance at the range in the last couple of years. It's very frustrating to not be able to shoot better than a 4" group at 100 yards. With my wife going to work for the school district we suddenly had much better insurance coverage than before, so I decided to explore the possibilities. I found that Medicare would cover some of the surgery. It covers the surgery and basic, non-prescription lenses. That kind of surgery clears up your vision, but you still need bifocals for correction both near and far. If you want prescription lenses for either near or far only it's an additional $3000 or so. Bifocal lenses are roughly an extra $6000. I chose the $3000 package, with my wife's insurance picking up a big chunk of that. I would need glasses only for reading and close work, pretty much how I did things already.
Surgery takes about 15 minutes per eye. They do one at a time and let the first one heal about 3 weeks before doing the other eye. It's not painful at all, and you're sedated during the procedure. You can't drive for 24 hours, but after that you resume normal activities.
My experience with the first eye was a real "eye-opener"...literally. Suddenly the world was a lot brighter and a lot sharper. What was really annoying was the difference in performance between the two eyes. Everything in the other eye was slightly blurry and yellow, like I had on yellow aviator glasses. Everything in the treated eye looked sharp at a distance and almost blue. I couldn't wait to get the second eye done. Wow, what a difference!
I got the second eye done last week and I'm very pleased. I haven't been to the range yet, but I'm very optimistic that my performance will improve dramatically. Looking through a scope I can see a huge improvement. Iron sights I will have to reserve judgement on until I can actually do some live fire. But I will be at least no worse off with open sights.
The one thing that might be considered a drawback is that I can now see a couple of floaters in my right eye that I couldn't see before. I knew they were there because my eye doctor commented on them. One is right in my field of vision when sighting a firearm, and I think it may be the root cause of my deteriorating shooting performance. I talked to another eye surgeon yesterday who is pretty sure he can help me with that issue. We're going to wait another 3 months to let my current surgeries heal and for conditions to resolve before deciding what to do.
My main point here is that my vision was just like my hearing, in that I didn't know how bad it had gotten until I had it corrected.
