I am 78, and my opthamologist said she did not know how I could see through my cataracts. Indeed, the world looked somewhat dim and yellow, but with my Zeiss varifocal eyeglasses, I could see 20-20 at all distances. But I decided that the time had come to get my yellow, cloudy lenses replaced.

As usual, I wanted the best lenses available, and chose the Alcon PanOptix Trifocal cataract lenses (one of which was toric to correct astigmatism), even though they cost me $4000. A great introduction to these lenses is on YouTube. According to Alcon, here is how the lenses work:

Explanation from https://professional.myalcon.com/cataract-surgery/intraocular-lens/panoptix/

The operations (spaced two weeks apart) were successful, and both lenses are perfectly centered.

The world is now brighter and whiter! Especially, it is now a pleasure to use my 32"-wide computer monitor, which is 24" from my eyes (one of the lens focal points). I can see all parts of the monitor without moving my head (to the varifocal close-up area). In the mornings, I see quite well. Unlike with eyeglasses, there is no need to look down to see close up.

But all is not perfect. Things are too bright (perhaps) and lack the contrast I got using eyeglasses. For example, if I look at Google Maps, it is really hard to see the gray street boundaries on the white backgrounds. On my Mac, in Finder using Column View, I can barely see the vertical column boundaries.

Even worse, as the day progresses, things deteriorate. I start to see double at all distances, but it is especially bad close up, say, reading my Kindle. The clear, sharp letters are overlaid (shifted up) by an out-of-focus version of the image. I mean overlaid literally because the out-of-focus images are raised off the page in stereo. This is really annoying and tiring for my eyes. Reading glasses do not help—I just see the double images a bit more clearly. As a scientist, I really want to understand how this happens.

At night, all point sources of light are surrounded by concentric rings (up to 9!). This is sort of pretty. However, if the light sources are close together, it is hard to see in the overlap areas.

I can only hope that my eyes do not tire so much as I get more used to the lenses . . .