Shades of Clarity: Exploring How Cataract Vision Feels Throughout Each Stage

Cataract vision is a slow, almost unnoticeable condition that washes out colours, amplifies bright lights, and blurs the hard-edged lines of the objects around you. For some, it feels like you’re looking through the film grain of a movie reel, while for others, it’s like looking through frosty or fogged-up glass. Understanding how your cataract vision changes at each stage and the sensations you’ll experience is important to maintaining your well-being, and to making informed decisions around treatment.

How Cataract Vision Progresses Stage By Stage

Early Stage – A Slight Loss in Adaptation

In the early stage of cataract development, your vision may feel like you’re peering through a slightly hazy mirror. While your eye’s lens still looks clear to the naked eye, there are subtle changes happening to the lens’s structure and function.

These minor changes may make it feel like objects are a little less sharp and clear, colours may appear less vibrant, and you may experience a subtle blurriness. You may feel like it’s harder for you to adapt to bright lights or sunlight, or to low-light conditions. You may feel like lights have a glare to them, which is uncomfortable and distracting.

Intermediate Stage – Immature Cataract Vision – Dimming Lights & Fuzziness

In this stage of cataract vision, your len’s becomes increasingly cloudy, and less light can reach your eye’s retina. As a result, the distorted images you see become fuzzier, and you may find it hard to distinguish between objects with differing shades, colors or patterns that have similar brightness levels (contrast sensitivity).

When interacting with everyday objects like lamps or computer screens, their brightness can feel too harsh, and completing activities that require fine details like sewing, or reading becomes harder to do. You may also feel out of sorts, as it seems like your eye prescription keeps changing at a much quicker pace than normal.

Advanced Stage – Mature Cataract Vision – Engulfed In Shadow

With advanced cataract vision, the lens becomes completely cloudy, blocking out most or all of the light from the eye. Vision becomes severely impaired at this point (sometimes lost entirely), and you may find it hard to recognize faces or objects. You may experience sensations like:

• Double Vision: where objects you’re looking at appear overlapped or duplicated.
• Color Distortion: where there’s a significant change in how you perceive the colors around you – they appear faded and washed out, impacting your enjoyment of activities like art or nature.
• Poor to Zero Night Vision: if you do have night vision, it’s going to be severely impacted, making it feel useless to go out at night or get up and move around without help, as seeing in the dimly-lit environment is very hard, and can even be dangerous.

These experiences make the world feel challenging to navigate, and increase one’s risk for accidents and the development of depression due to loss of independence and a lower quality of life.

Severe Stage – Hypermature Cataract Vision – A Hardened Lens

In the final stage of cataract development, there is near-total vision loss, which impacts your ability to perform daily tasks independently. The lens of the eye may harden and shrink, and in some cases, the lens may break apart or leak fluid into the eye. This can increase pressure in the eye, create inflammation, and cause swelling, redness, and rarely pain.

FAQs

Do Cataracts Always Affect Both Eyes?
No, cataracts can develop independently in each eye. It is common for cataracts to affect both eyes eventually, with one eye being more affected than the other.
Can Cataract Vision Be Prevented or Slowed?
There is no guaranteed way to prevent them, but certain lifestyle choices like protecting your eyes from UV rays, not smoking, maintaining a healthy diet, and managing underlying health conditions, may help slow progression.
How Are Cataracts Treated?
The only effective treatment for cataracts is surgery. With this treatment, the cloudy lens is removed and replaced with an artificial one to restore vision.

Summary

Each stage of cataract vision brings its unique changes in clarity, experiences, and feelings. From being unsure of that initial haziness, to learning how to handle bright lights, distorted images, and color fading, to the gradual decline in vision, the cataract journey is nothing short of overwhelming. In understanding the sensations you’re experiencing and seeking out personalized treatment, you can regain your vision and prove your quality of life.