Bi-Color Vision

One of the first things I noticed after my cataract surgery is that I see completely different colors in each eye now. I was shocked at the difference. At my post-op the doctor asked me if I had any questions and that was one of the first ones - is it normal to see different colors?

The answer is yes, it is normal. He assured me that I am seeing the true colors in the eye with the new lens. The other eye, with my natural old lens, is seeing distorted colors. The old lens has apparently aged and discolored, which discolors everything I see. Since both eyes aged at the same rate, I guess, I never noticed that colors were changing.

Well, now I do! It was shocking at first. Disorienting. But I've become more accustomed to it now. If I want to see what the 'true' color of something is, I close my left eye. My sight is still blurred in the right eye, but I can see enough that if both eyes were that blurred I'd manage to live fairly normally - just not be able to read books without a magnifying glass, not be able to do any handwork like needlepoint.

The biggest differnce is in the colors blue and yellow. There is a lot of blue in red colored things, too, and in green colored things. Especially magenta. wow! And burgandy. Wow! And of course, I really notice it with white.

Suddenly a white sheet of paper practically glows. White clouds are, well, white. And my cat, well she is white, too.

Except for last night.

I was standing in our office room doorway and looked over to the table where Cheyenne was sitting on my craft bag, waiting for me to come and work on my project. She sits there, snoozes there, watches me with eyes half closed there. One of the handlebars on the exercise bike split my view of her completely in half, like a black line drawn down the center of her body. And the way I was standing, the correct distance for this to happen, I saw her head and shoulders with my right eye and her hind quarters and back only with my left eye. My white cat had suddenly become two completely different colors on each side of the handlebars!

It was actually kind of shocking. I'm going to try and give a comparrison in the following two photos. Just divide her up with a black like around her middle and pretend you see the two photos as one instead.

Right eye vision now:Left eye vision, apx. color:


I was amazed at the difference!