A much younger colleague passes out printed material at a recent meeting. When my copy arrives, I pull my glasses out but still have trouble reading it because the type is smaller than a box score. I look around and am disappointed that one person a few years older has not put on glasses. A minute later he is holding the paper a long way from his face. Ten minutes later he is complaining about the size of the type, which leads me to suspect he needs glasses but doesn’t have them or want to put them on. A colleague a few years younger, needs no glasses. Only the co-worker a little older than me puts on glasses.
Until a couple of years ago, I could read almost anything and see at a distance with my contact lenses. When reading became a problem, the eye doctor prescribed a pair of glasses for smaller type. About six months after I started wearing them, I needed them for all my reading and had to have a pair at work, home and in my car. About six months after that, I was doing work in the yard and noticed I was having a lot of trouble putting the screwdriver in the screw slot. So I bought myself a pair of cheap, durable cheater glasses to wear when I did close up work around the house. This summer I needed a pair of glasses to operate the lawn mower. Shortly after that, I noticed I was having trouble reading the radio dial and the odometer in my car without glasses. Soon after that, I needed reading glasses to operate my cell phone
When I went in for my eye exam in November, the doctor suggested bifocal contacts. When I put them in it was like a miracle. All of sudden I could see close up and far away without having to put glasses on and off. The only downside was looking in the mirror. I realized why people weren’t buying it when I said I was 39 and younger than my wife. The bifocal contacts are still working pretty good, but I need to put my glasses on for smaller type.
When will it end?
Let me know what you think.
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5 comments:
I hate to say this since I always like to try to be optimistic, but it will never end. I think the next thing to start going will be the hair.
Elizabeth
Since you and I work together, you know that my hair is the least of my worries. Just the other night, someone at the YM remarked that I had an incredibly full and gray-free head of hair (for a guy my age, of course.)
If my hair goes, I'll have nothing left!
My eyes started to go bad my sophomore year in college. Just slightly nearsighted, but I was traumatized nonetheless. Glasses? Me? Say it isn't so!
My eyes worsened at a quickening pace throughout the 1990s, when I spent untold hours working on computers. (I'm a writer/editor; Microsoft Word is my friend.)
In 2004, I suffered a detached retina, which required a nylon buckle to be surgically implanted around my right eye. Around this time, I began to more fully understand the meaning of "trauma" as it relates to eyes.
That eye now droops a bit, creating an uneven appearance of features, not unlike those of Bill the Cat, or possibly even Arianna Huffington (to be generous on my own behalf). But I can see well enough to continue working on my beloved computer, so I'll take it.
Last August, I was informed by my eye doctor that the vision in my surgically repaired eye is improving. I am careening toward farsightedness. In a few months, we're talking progressive lenses. His words? "It only gets worse from here. Quickly."
On the bright side, we're all in this together.
I always got by without glasses, in the back of my mind knowing that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree (both my parents have glasses).
Then I took the eye exam during my physical when I started at the R-J and that was that. Four eyes are better than none.
People are really into the laser eye surgery nowadays.
It runs you a little more than $2,000.
I've always been very weary of letting a laser anywhere near my eyes, but I'm starting to think it could be worth it.
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