Just documenting this to help other people who are deciding whether to have the surgery or not. Luke had cataract surgery (mature cataracts) in 2020 when he was 10. Total cost for consult/surgery/rechecks within a month of the surgery was about $6100. Prior to the surgery they do an ERG, which basically tells them whether they can expect eyesight to be restored post surgery. Luke had two ERGS (because he failed the first one) and he also failed the second. They claimed this was due to retinal degeneration and that cataract surgery would not restore his eyesight. I elected to do the surgery anyway since dogs that don't have it done are so much more likely to develop glaucoma which will necessitate eye removal at some point. Glaucoma sounds very painful and at the end of the day, whatever will cause my dog less pain is the route I'm going to take. The Ophthalmologist did not recommend surgery since she did not think it would restore sight but she did it anyway at my request. Small miracle, he DID end up regaining his eyesight, for a couple years at least. In the past two months the retinal degeneration has caught up to him and he can only see in the best lit areas. It was beautiful seeing him be able to see again after having been blind from almost a year because of the cataracts. I've never seen a dog so happy. IMO he failed the ERGs because the cataract was simply too thick to see through. So, surgery... he was in the hospital for a day. I brought him home that night. I had one heck of a scare a couple hours after I got him home. I didn't really realize that dogs had third eyelids and that if their eyes are irritated they can cover their entire eye with that eyelid, which just looks like a bunch of tissue and blood vessels and nastiness. Apparently it's not uncommon for a dog to pull up his entire third eyelid post surgery. Luckily his Ophtho was still at the clinic when I called her bawling that something was terribly wrong and it looked like his eyeballs were melted or backward or something. I may post the picture though it's hard to look at and still traumatizes me a bit. She had me send her the picture and told me everything was fine. He was due back there the next day anyway for a post-op recheck. It took a couple weeks before he could see again. Occasionally his eye pressures were high on most of his rechecks and they had to give him some kind of shot. The drops were semi-torture for a couple weeks. You don't necessarily HAVE to wake up in the middle of the night and do the drops, but I certainly did cut my (and Luke's) sleep down to 6 hours at a time in order to keep up with the drops. Thankfully the drop frequency dropped off immensely after about a week and a half. I made a spreadsheet for the drops, it was the only way I could keep up with them. He had to go in for rechecks once every two weeks for the next couple of months. I don't regret having done it at all and will do it for my future dogs if I need to. I do wish someone had told me about the third eyelid thing though.
