Daylight is blinding since the new lenses went in. Am I going to need sunglasses for the rest of my life now?

Both eyes done, standard monofocals, and I would not undo it for anything. But I have gone from a woman who owned one pair of sunglasses, bought in 1998, to a woman who has them on the hall table, in the car, in her handbag and clipped to the visor.

Yesterday I walked out of the library at about four o'clock into ordinary August sunshine and had to stop on the step with my hand up like I was saluting somebody. A white car went past and I genuinely flinched. Low sun coming home along the bypass is the worst of the lot, it comes straight in over the fields and the whole windscreen just goes to milk.

Two things I want to know. Is this the dazzle wearing off eventually, or is this simply what a clear lens does and I had better get used to it? And the bigger one, since my old yellowed lenses were presumably filtering something out, are my eyes now less protected than they were? I keep reading that the implants have a filter built in but I have also read the opposite, so I do not know what to believe.

One eye done, one to go next week, and I can confirm the saluting. I did it outside the butcher's and a woman asked if I was all right.

Interested in the protection question too. Nobody explained any of this to me, they just handed me the drops and a leaflet about not swimming.

Two and a bit years out. It absolutely does calm down, but I would not say it disappears. I am still quicker to reach for sunglasses than I was before the operations, and I have made my peace with that because the trade is a very good one.

The one that caught me out was not summer at all. It was February, low sun, wet road, driving west at about half four. That is the worst light there is for a pair of new lenses and I now just plan around it, leave earlier or take the road with the hedges.

Bought the clip-on flip-up sort so I did not have to keep swapping between my readers and prescription sunglasses. Look like a man about to inspect a hive. Do not care in the slightest.

June, I did exactly this. For about a fortnight after my first eye I wore sunglasses indoors, which my husband found hilarious, and I remember standing at the kitchen sink thinking the tiles had been replaced.

Taking your two questions in order, and as a patient rather than a clinician. On the dazzle: mine settled a great deal, and quite quickly, though like Harold I would say it settled rather than vanished. The reason is not that the light changed, it is that for years you were looking through a lens that had gone yellow and cloudy, which was dimming and scattering everything before it reached you. Take that away and the full amount of light arrives at once, at a visual system that had quietly adjusted to less of it. The adjusting back takes weeks rather than days, and while it happens, bright days feel violent. The site's account of seeing clearly again after cataract surgery is largely about that fortnight, and I wrote it while still slightly startled.

On the protection question, which I think is the one actually worrying you: when I asked, I was told that modern lens implants include an ultraviolet filter, taking over that job from the natural lens, and that is what the reviewer of our guides has said here too. So the honest answer is that you are not left unprotected against ultraviolet. What that filter does not do is make bright light comfortable, which is a different thing entirely and is why everybody in this thread is buying sunglasses. And a good pair still earns its place for general eye health over the years, alongside the check-ups, which is the ground looking after your eyes after cataract surgery covers.

What I would not do is diagnose your own dazzle from a forum. Which lens model you have is in your notes, and if the glare is bad enough to be stopping you doing things three months out, that is a question for your surgeon or optometrist at review rather than for me. Mention the bypass specifically. Low sun on a wet road is a real and answerable complaint, not you being fussy.

Reporting back, and slightly sheepishly. Took the low sun problem to my optometrist as suggested, and part of my trouble turned out to be my old prescription sunglasses, which are now completely wrong for these eyes and were doing me no favours at all. New ones ordered, polarised on her recommendation for the road.

The general dazzle has also eased since I wrote the original post, so that seems to be going the way Pauline and Harold said. I am keeping the pair in the handbag though. And the pair in the car. Some habits have earned their keep.