Thank you so much Dr. Hagan. This gave me a lot of points for discussion with my surgeon during my 1 week appointment.
Thank you for the insightful information,
No, as far as I remember, I was told that I had no astigmatism pre-op. Prior to having cataracts last year, I have never worn glasses and had 20/20 vision all my life. Could one have astigmatism following surgery?
It may be that your eye is still healing as he says, perhaps there is some initial postop swelling or something, and things will be fine before you start work. I'd suggest being hopeful things will improve, however its likely possible to get you able to function for your job in the worst case. Even if nothing changed, if your distance vision is even "just ok", then worst case they should be able to prescribe reading glasses to shift that "ok" distance vision to reading distance to let you function. If your other eye doesn't need correction (or if you have a contact lens for it) then you could try over the counter reading glasses now from a local store to see if that works for you.
If you don't have a contact lens for the other eye, you could try readers to see if they work for your Restor eye and if so then have them prescribe a contact lens for the other eye so you can use off the shelf readers. They could prescribe reading glasses to work with both eyes, but often they prefer to wait 3-4 weeks or more until someone's vision stabilizes before prescribing correction. If you need it to function they would probably be willing to prescribe glasses earlier for you but you'd risk needing to have them remade if the prescription changes (though you might find a place that will redo your glasses at no cost or low cost, sometimes a friendly Lenscrafters or other store will let you update a prescription within the first few weeks for free. they might be more expensive for a single pair of glasses, but if they'll update the prescription free within a few weeks that may be cheaper than a place that won't).
I'm guessing you will have a 1 week postop check where you can get more information. Did they check your prescription at 1 day postop and your "best corrected" visual acuity? One possibility is that you have residual astigmatism interfering with vision. Did you not have much astigmatism pre-op or did they attempt to correct it with an incision or a toric lens (which might have rotated and could cause issues)?
Another possibility, though it seems unlikely they would be this far off, is that the lens power they implanted is off and it left you farsighted, hyperopic. If you were left too farsighted, then the "near" point for the Restor would be pushed out further, though it seems like that would give you good vision at some intermediate distance unless it were so far off that the near point became the distance focal point. For most people the formulas to determine the lens power are fairly accurate, but they are based on statistics rather than being exact. For a minority of unlucky patients (often those with strong prescriptions preop) the lens power can be off enough to cause issues.