Sight

There is only one thing that bothers me about the aging process. I'm OK with the wrinkles. I'm OK with things starting to sag. I'm even OK with the changes in my metobolism that now makes it such a struggle to lose weight. What really bothers me is losing my ability to read things without holding them as far away as my arms will reach.

I went to the eye doctor this past week. I have a bad recent history with eye doctors. About 3 years ago I had my eyes checked and ordered the glasses in the prescription written for me and when I got them I was sure the lenses had gotten mixed up. When I took them back the doctor told me she figured I would need reading glasses soon so she went ahead and wrote my prescription based on that! I was not amused but got my money back for the glasses. Six or eight months after that I went to another eye doctor because I still needed a new prescription. He spent a lot of time with me and I feel that I got a good prescription.

In the past 2 1/2 years since my reading ability has simply gone. I'm OK when I wear my glasses but with my contacts I always have to wear reading glasses - to work at my laptop, to read a menu, to sign anything . . . it's just a pain and I refuse to wear one of those strings around my neck with the reading glasses attached.

When I went this week I explained my situation, and I was given a couple of options. One, I could wear one contact for distance and one for up close. Not good enough. I think it would drive me crazy. OR I could wear bi-focal contacts but evidently they are not perfected yet so nope to that one. Finally, she gave me a weaker prescription, the logic being that my distance sight would be a little fuzzier but I wouldn't need my readers as much. She told me to give this a chance for 10 days and then come back.

I've been giving it a chance and I'm not real thrilled. While it isn't nearly as disorienting to try to read close up I still have to hold things away from me unless the writing is very small (like labels in the grocery store and credit card receipts) in which case I still need to haul out the readers. And my distance is far fuzzier than I am comfortable with (for instance, I have to be right up on an intersection to read a street sign and I can't even read billboards until I am practically past them).

I still have some time until I go back Thursday to make up my mind but it seems to me I'm going to ask for the stronger prescription. If I'm going to have to be tied to the readers anyway I might as well have crisp distance vision.