higher order astigmatism or ???

The astigmatism in my left eye (surgery a year ago) is "regular" in that on a spoke pattern the sharp bars at the nearer focus are rotated 90 degrees from the sharp bars at the more distant focus.   Just like the drawings in the optics text books.

However, my right eye (cataract removed two weeks ago) it is a bit more complex.  The near focus at 1 meter is "simple": one set of sharp bars at 85 degrees (measured from 9:00 O'Clock clockwise).  The far focus at 3 meters (more or less) has the expected sharp bars at 175 degrees, but in addition, the bars at 85 degrees once again become sharp(er).  They are not quite as crisp as those at 175, but are much clearer than the bars in between, at say 130 degrees.  That is, at the far focus there are essentially 4 sharp (or sharpish) regions 90 degrees apart from each other.  If I watch the bars at 85 degrees while walking away from the pattern they fuzz out maximally at around 2 meters and then sharpen up again, meanwhile the bars at 175 degrees just go from fuzzy to sharp and stay that way.  Strange.  Also, a point at infinity, for instance a bright star at night looks like a sideways lower case gamma (or the Christian fish symbol, with the head pointing right, the vertical tail line missing, and of course none of the letters inside.)  

It seems like there is some other (slight) aberration in play in the right beyond the simple astigmatism of the left eye.

I don't expect the right eye to stay this way exactly, since the left eye changed a lot in the months after surgery.
If the left eye is any guide, the right won't start changing to its final shape until after the steroid eye drops are stopped.  Presurgery the right eye had 0.0 cylinder, hopefully it will eventually heal back to that.

[Ray T Oyakawa, MD]

Too early in the post operative period.  Be patient and ask your doctor.

Dr. O.