Office job, one eye done and one waiting. Is it safe to go back to staring at a screen all day already?

Younger than most people on here I think, I am 58 and still working full time in an office. Cataract in the left eye done last Thursday, right eye booked for early December. The leaflet said "most people return to work within a few days" and my manager has taken that very literally.

Two questions. First, is it actually safe to sit at a screen for eight hours with an eye that was operated on a week ago, or will it strain the new lens or something? Second, the practical side is a mess. The new eye sees the screen soft because it is set for distance and the old eye sees it fine through my old glasses but everything else is double. I keep shutting one eye like a pirate.

Anyone who has worked through the gap, how did you manage?

Retired, so no help on the office, but the pirate thing I remember well. I had my optician pop the lens out of the operated side of my old glasses for a few quid. Not perfect, but it stopped the double vision for me.

My daughter had hers at 52 and went back after four days. She said the screen did not hurt the eye but her eyes got dry and tired by mid afternoon and she had to use the lubricating drops a lot. She also turned the font size up which made a big difference.

MikeJT said:

is it actually safe to sit at a screen for eight hours

Mike, using a screen does not harm a healing eye or strain the new lens; the lens is fixed and does not tire, and reading or screen use is generally fine in the first weeks. What readers describe is tiredness and dryness rather than damage, which is exactly Betty's daughter's experience: we blink less at screens, and a recently operated eye is often drier than usual, so regular breaks and the lubricants the clinic allows help a lot. The things to avoid in the first weeks are rubbing the eye, dusty or dirty environments and swimming, and the guide to exercise and activity after cataract surgery covers return to work alongside those.

The double vision is the harder part and it is the in-between imbalance most of us went through. Ken's trick of removing the lens from the operated side is the classic one, and a cheap pair of readers or a screen-distance pair can help the new eye with the monitor. Your clinic or optician can advise on what suits your eyes. If the drops schedule clashes with work, ask the clinic whether a different timing works; I found setting phone alarms helped. And if anything in the operated eye gets worse rather than better, more pain, redness or a drop in vision, that is a call to the eye unit the same day, not something to work through.

Thanks all. Went back on Monday. Screen is fine, eye is a bit dry by four o'clock as predicted. Bigger font, phone alarm for the drops, and the optician did the lens out trick on an old pair for nothing.

One more for when you get further on, Mike. When both eyes are done, ask the optician to measure your actual screen distance for any work glasses. Reading glasses are set closer than a monitor and the wrong ones will have you leaning in all day.

Noted Harold. Two and a half weeks in now, settled into a routine. Manager has stopped asking if I can see the spreadsheet. Counting down to December.