They gave me a contact lens to trial monovision before choosing. Four days in I feel seasick. Does everyone adapt eventually?

Assessment done, surgery not booked yet, and I have been handed a decision I did not know was coming.

The surgeon offered monovision. One eye set for distance, the other set for near, both with ordinary lenses, and the idea is you end up doing most things without glasses because between them the two eyes cover the range. He was very fair about it, said it does not suit everybody, and sent me away with a contact lens in one eye for a fortnight to see how I got on.

Reader, I am not getting on. Four days in and I feel faintly seasick from about lunchtime onwards, there is a dull ache behind the eye on the near side, and words on the television have a soft shadow hanging off them. Walking through the market on Saturday was genuinely unpleasant, everything felt like it was arriving slightly out of order. I had to sit down with a coffee.

But here is my problem. Everyone says give it time, the brain adapts. So how do I know whether I am four days away from it clicking, or whether I am simply someone this will never suit and I should say so and take the ordinary distance lenses in both eyes? I do not want to talk myself out of something good because I was impatient, and I do not want to talk myself into something permanent because I was polite.

Polite is the word, isn't it. I nearly agreed to something at my assessment purely because the man had been kind to me and I did not want to seem difficult. Took my daughter to the next appointment specifically so one of us would say the awkward thing out loud.

No experience of monovision myself, I went plain distance in both and wear readers, which suits me down to the ground. But four days of feeling seasick is information. That is exactly the sort of thing the trial exists to find out, so tell them.

I turned monovision down flat and went the multifocal route instead, which brought its own entertainment in the form of rings around every headlight for two months.

Point being there is no free option. Every route to fewer glasses costs you something somewhere, and the question is only which cost you would rather live with. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling.

My brother in law has had monovision for about nine years and swears by it. Reads a menu, drives a van, never wears glasses, insufferable about it at Christmas.

He also told me it took him a good six weeks before it stopped feeling peculiar, and that he nearly gave up at the end of the first week. So both things seem to be true at once, which is not much help to you, Betty, sorry.

Betty, the honest answer to your question is that nobody can tell you from here whether you are four days from it clicking, and that this uncertainty is precisely why your surgeon gave you the contact lens rather than simply booking it.

What monovision is, briefly, so the trade-offs are clear. Two standard monofocal implants, one eye targeted for distance and the other for near, so the range is covered between the two eyes rather than within each one. It is a genuine alternative to a multifocal or extended depth of focus lens for reducing dependence on glasses, and it avoids the night-time haloes and glare those lenses can bring, which is why it appeals to people who drive at night. What it asks in return is that your brain learns to attend to whichever eye is in focus for the task and quietly disregard the other. Most people who suit it do that unconsciously and stop noticing. Some never do.

The symptoms you describe are the recognised ones during adaptation: the sense of imbalance, the ghosting or shadowing on text, eye ache, and effort in busy visual environments such as a market. They tend to be worst in the first days and to ease over the following weeks, and adaptation is generally reckoned in weeks rather than days, so four days is early. Two things genuinely predict trouble more than timing does. The first is the size of the difference between the two eyes: a large near target reduces stereo depth perception more and is harder to tolerate, which is why many surgeons now use a smaller difference, sometimes called mini-monovision or blended vision, that leaves some glasses use for very fine print but is far easier to live with. The second is what you actually do, since prolonged night driving and precise close handwork are the tasks people most often find monovision costs them. A trial that continues to feel wrong for its full length is a meaningful result, not a failure of patience on your part.

What I would say plainly is this. Finish the trial if you can bear it, keep a note of which specific tasks are bad and at what time of day, and take that note back to your surgeon before anything is booked, because the target can be adjusted or the plan changed entirely. If it stays this unpleasant, saying so is not being difficult, it is the trial doing its job. And the fitting, the target and whether a smaller difference would suit your eyes are decisions for the surgeon who has measured them, not for a forum. The site's guide to choosing a lens for cataract surgery sets out the options side by side, and monofocal vs multifocal lenses covers the alternative Ken took.

One caution about trials in general. A contact lens sits on the eye surface and a cataract sits behind it, so a trial run through a clouded lens is an imperfect preview of how the same target will feel once the cataract is gone. That cuts both ways, and it is another reason to discuss the result rather than to treat a fortnight's discomfort as a verdict on its own.

Finished the fortnight as instructed, kept the note, and the seasickness never really went. Day nine was better, days ten and eleven were worse, and by the end I had stopped wanting to leave the house on busy days.

Took the list back and said it out loud, which took more courage than it should have. He was completely unbothered, said that is what the trial is for and that plenty of the people he sends out with a lens come back saying much the same. Distance in both eyes, readers for the small print, and I am oddly relieved to have made a boring choice.

Thank you all. Particularly Ken, for the reminder that there is no free option.