Thanks for your reply.

I have been developing a cataract in my right eye now for about 6 years ( I
was told I had one for the first time during a regular eye exam in 1999).
The doctor said that there was a cataract in the left eye too, but it was
much less developed.
Since then I have noticed  a slow progression of the cataract in the right
eye, and in the past 2 years have started to notice a little of the same
symptoms in the left eye as well.
The main problem is driving at night has become harder since I get a lot of
glare from oncoming headlights. The right eye has now also started to get
blurry as well and I can't really resolve small text clearly anymore or see
clearly at a distance, even with glasses to improve my nearsightedness. I am
55 years old.

I am considering getting a cataract operation but I am concerned about a few
things:

I read somewhere that cataracts are best treated after the condition has
progressed for a while since there is a point when the cataract is "ripe"
and responds better to the surgery. I wonder whether I should try to wait a
few years considering my age, and whether I should do the left eye at all in
the near future. I estimate that its progress is about 2 to 3 years behind
the right eye.

I am aware that I will have to pick whether I want to have lens implants
that will allow me to focus close or far away and will need glasses to focus
for the other extreme. I am unsure which to pick. I think that I would like
to have clear distance vision and wear glasses for closeup focus, but
perhaps it's better to have clear close focus and have to wear glasses for
distance vision. Is there a preferred option? I do closeup work sometimes
where I need to see small details and a lot of reading, but I also love to
surf and it has become nearly impossible to see the approaching waves when
the contrast is flat or the light is coming from the wrong angle.
It seems that since I won't be able to use my eye muscles to focus at all, a
single lens that is for closeup vision may only work well at a set distance
and I will have trouble focusing  on things slightly closer or further away,
while a distance lens implant will tend to focus on various distance
settings more easily. My reference for this is a camera's lens. Depth of
field in a camera is very hard to control the closer you are to the point of
focus and you need to make adjustments to the aperture more so than when
focusing the lens on a distant object. Once you are about 10 feet away, the
camera lens starts to get more of everything in focus without needing to
adjust the aperture.

If I do one eye only and wait a few years to do the other eye, am I likely
to suffer eye strain /headaches as I struggle to deal with the different
capabilities of each eye?

And finally, I assume that once a person has had lens implants (and is
completely healed) they will never be able to rub their eyes again in any
significant way since they could wrinkle the little plastic lens sitting in
the eye and mess the whole thing up. Is this an issue? I do like to rub my
eyes from time to time and I worry that I could absentmindedly rub my eyes
too hard and  damage my vision permanently.

The only other thing that I wonder about is how they keep you from
involuntarily twitching during the eye operation itself. I hate the thought
of anything in my eye and I don't see how I could lie there perfectly still
while the doctor did the operation. Obviously, twitching during the
operation could create a disaster, or at least it seems that way.

Thanks for any advice that you can offer me on these questions.

OK.  Who's the brain who spelled "insurence" on the home page of Dr.
Cykert's website: http://www.lasikgo.com/