I can get by most places with store-boughts; but for editing and computer work—I need something better; and plastic lenses weren’t cutting it anyway.
Plus I’m not that happy with the prescription. So..I changed optometrists and went to Costco’s doc—there’s more to it than that, like a stray 16.00 bill hanging over from the last company my optometrist worked for, that the optometrist wanted me to pay. She billed me right around the date of the wedding. I lost the darn bill. I’ve been to her shop since then for, oh, at least 3-4 times, paid a quite large bill for exam and two pair of glasses, one driving, one reading—quite a few hundred dollars…and now I get a notice, atop the bad prescription and the fact they only offer plastic lenses—that they’re sending the 16.00 to collection. I rather hit the ceiling, dashed off a check with the note—‘y’know, you could have billed me for this any of the three recent trips I’ve made to your office’—and decided on a new optometrist anyway.
So, well, I’m pretty satisfied with the new guy. And Costco recommended a local company that does glass, right over from my house. They grind their own lenses. So I have hopes. Meanwhile I’m still looking for the darn glasses, which are very hard to find—being titanium wire no-frame, mostly lens. I’ve looked under furniture. I’m now thinking cat toy.
I just got a note from my optometrist; not a Christmas card, but a reminder that it was time for my annual exam. I’m debating revisiting the bifocal thing, having tried separate frames for computer work and driving (not all I had hoped). I tried progressives before, and wasn’t impressed, but maybe traditional bifocals with the line across the lens will work better. My astigmatism and a touch of nearsightedness do really weird things to my vision. Doesn’t help that my optometrist outsources her lenses to an outfit that has boogered up my prescription at least twice so far.
I have both – the sunglasses are the traditional kind with the line, because the tint hides it to some extent. Nearsighted, with astigmatism, and over the hill – it’s a wonderful combination. All it really needs is a prism like my father needed.
(I was very happy with Costco last time I had a prescription filled.)
I have what some optometrists seem to call a torque and others the need for a ‘prism’ to make my eyes work together. I’m not used to 3-d vision. It’s something I first acquired in my 30’s when an optometrist decided to fix this. I recall leaving Dallas on a plane at night, putting on my new glasses to see—and being very nearly motion-sick for the first time in my life. It was layered. It was fascinating. But looking back and forth between the 3-d lights of Dallas to the cabin was just weird. I kept experimenting with them—I was very anxious to see if I got the same effect while watching television—and I was disappointed, of course: the tv cabinet was fascinating, but the shows were all still flat. But—it’s work, and it only works straight ahead. The effect breaks up on side vision. And it just wasn’t worth it. My brain does a complex camera 1-camera 2 shift as I need to look at things. The poor optometrist tells me to keep both eyes open but use the left eye and I swear I can’t always tell which I’m using. Poor man spent quite a while with me, with people waiting. But I figure I may be a more interesting subject than the typical kid who needs glasses.
My face is too flat to use bifocal well: they produce muscle strain from the effort of looking down and they just can’t seem to set them where I could use them, because then the general area is too high. Plus it’s that torque thing.
The main thing is to find an optometrist you trust to take care of your eyes in a way that works for you. Beware of the guys who want to ‘fix’ things for you.
I have a terrific optometrist I have been going to for thirty years. The problem is glasses! I have to have plastic lenses; I managed to break three different pairs of glass lenses, leaning over kilns. Last fall I went to a guy who has had a shop for ages. He fits using a computer program. Finally I have glasses that are light weight, rimless progressives. Finally I have progressives that don’t go bluey at the perimeters. I actually have peripheral vision again! I can work close up at my wheel without separate glasses. And his prices were great!
I always found that, despite carefully using my wrist to push the glasses back into place, I got clay smears across the lenses.
I pick up a towel I keep near by before pushing glasses, answering the phone (clay and phones do not mix) opening doors. You write about clay in the past tense; do you still do clay?
Regrettably, my clay days are over. I actually was offered a potter’s wheel, but would have had to replace some parts on it, and build or borrow a kiln. Pottery supplies are prohibitive in HI; we must import materials from the mainland, which gets pricy quick.
My quick fix was to stop wearing glasses when throwing, which nearsightedness and minor astigmatism allow. 😀
My sister got her eyes “done” earlier this year for cataracts. The side benefit was she went from 20-400 to 20-20 overnight. That’s no exaggeration. I remember when it took months to heal, and one at a time. She was cleared to drive the next day! Well, could have but it was just too wierd that fast. Did the other eye a week later! No more contacts, after 40 years, now just a $10 pair of drugstore reading glasses.
Don’t suppose you could get the same sort of new lenses?
Dang! Makes me want to preemptively get cataract surgery — rather than wait to have my vision deteriorate due to the cataracts. My mom did get better vision after her corneal transplants (Fuch’s dystrophy) — neither new cornea was as astigmatic as the ones she was born with.
I’ve thought about it, but my eyes, while they’ve given me very good vision for many decades—it’s not 3-d but very sharp. Or it was. Still is better than many people do very well with. But—the craters of the moon are getting indistinct. That’s a sadness.
Unfortunately, my eyes are a little iffy, and I’ve got cataract they’ve been fussing about for ten years, that never gets any worse. Plus scars on the cornea from when I broke my arm…yep, pole-vaulting, age 7: I’d had pinkeye, was just finally allowed outside, and Dad took me to the stadium to see the first track meet I’d ever seen (no tv in those days). I was intrigued by the pole-valting, and tried it with a rope tied to the fence, and a broomstick. Poor Dad saw me doing that and said that was too high. Lower the rope. I did, tripped, fell with the broomstick across my arm and broke both bones an inch above the wrist.
They got me into the car with my arm splinted and got me to the hospital. No doc. It was a weekend and every doc was on the golf course. They got one from Fort Sill and found an anaesthesiologist…took a couple of hours. And they administered ether in the drip method, and some of it dripped into my left eye, lucky me, and permanently scarred the cornea. Every doc that ever sees it just worries and worries about that—but heck, I see very well, always have, and it was just a start of a long adventure with that plaster cast, which had to be redone with a surgical saw, and then patched together — open windows, no screens, quite a place that was… but it was just real lucky, if it was going to hit my eye, that it fell where it never obscured vision. Adventures, adventures—but I am a little doubtful between that and other things if I would be a candidate for laser correction. Having been through that and eye surgery, I’m a shade on the over-protective side when it comes to it. 😉
The last time I lost my glasses for any significant amount of time (two days!!!) they were on the back of the couch. I’d been reading, and took them off, and…
There was a cat, but she didn’t take them up onto the couch. (If she’d cat toyed them, they’d have ended up in the bottom of her cat tree, like all the ball-headed sewing pins did.)
When I was younger I never lost glasses, they were always on my nose or on the night table or the swim towel. I broke them yes, but never lost them. With aging eyes and progressive trifocals there are some situations where it is easier to do without glasses and they do get “lost”. My solution is to own 2 pairs of glasses, supposedly as a backup in case pair 1 gets broken. In reality pair 2 mainly exists so I can see to find pair 1. (Only made possible by a really good employee benefit plan) -keeping an old pair around helps too.
under the bed? behind the dresser? maybe behind the marine aquarium? Where does Shu like to hide? How about in the cushions of the chairs? You didn’t by chance have them on outside and leave them laying on the patio table? Not under the seat in the car? Yes, I’m sure you’ve checked all those places.
I run into problems when I’ve put mine someplace other than the two or three regular locations I use.
At least you’re not like the Three Fates sisters, the Graeae as presented in the movie of Jason and the Argonauts, who fight over a seeing-eye device in order to foresee the future. Now that’s one heckuva’an odd situation for eyeglasses or cybernetic eyes….
Could be worse: the Terminator’s or the Borg’s eye implants! Shee’ll beeh baahck!
I can laugh at that, but hmm, what if my eyesight could be fixed by some fancy organ replacement or cybernetic implant whatchamacallit?
Neither of which are likely in my lifetime, but I was amazed at the progress made for restoring hearing using implants.
If some possibility were to become available, I’d have to really think about it, but I think, at least for my left eye, I’d be likely to try it.
The issue of vision correction gets very far into science-fictional territory, because the eye and the optic nerve are so closely tied to how our nervous system processes information, so it’s a very difficult problem to sort out the physical needs, and as difficult or more, to sort out the implications in how much it might go towards our understanding of how nerves transmit and process information, and therefore how we think, move, etc. — And yet it could mean huge medical advances for people with neuro-motor and vision problems. Or in simpler terms, it would mean people who are partially or fully blind or paralyzed might gain more or full normal/average function, a great thing.
Some time next year, I need to go in for an eye exam and new glasses, and I hope whatever I find out will be OK news.
But the simple thing of eyeglasses and other aids, great stuff, always needed. And how and why vision works (color, light/dark, acuity, pattern recognition, the differences between human and other vision) are all interesting.
By the way, I’ve been doing some looking for a new bedside reading lamp, bright enough to read by, close enough to reach the switch while in bed, and not a safety hazard. Findings so far online have been really, really strange. (A hot bulb in an all-plastic fixture? No, no thanks!) (Dimmer light than I have now? No, sorry.) (LED? Maybe; my results have been mixed.) (Don’t want something the cats or I can tip over, either.) (Don’t know what designers are thinking of lately, in practical terms.)
I hope you find your glasses or get them replaced pronto. Preferably both!
We once retrieved mother-in-law’s glasses from the big upright freezer in the barn. She’d apparently taken them off and set them down because they fogged while she was spelunking for a roast among the icicles in the old monstrosity.
She’d bought new glasses before they were rediscovered…
My glasses are either in the glasses case, or on my face. I read without them better than I read with them, and usually read in bed, where I don’t wear glasses (don’t need them to sleep). I can see well enough to get around without them. Must have them to drive, always have them when I go out the front door (unless I’m taking trash out). What really jazzes up my vision is optical migraines. They’re like migraines without the headache, but in my case, I get the optical symptoms, a scintillating scotoma, which starts out small and gradually takes over the whole field right field of vision — and here’s the kicker. Vision from each eye goes to both sides of the brain, so your “right” visual field includes the right side of what your left eye sees, so I get the scotoma worse in the right eye, almost completely obscuring my vision in that eye, but also in the left eye. I never had optical migraines until after I had surgery on my nose to correct a deviated septum. Go figure.
Oy. I know that one, too. I get an arc in the visual field – both eyes, matching – and it gradually increases in size. There are things I can do that keep it from becoming a literal headache, but it’s a problem until it goes away.
I also have found a place that still grinds their own lenses. The lens results are far more satisfactory. And it only takes about 15 minutes to get a satisfactory fit adjustment to the frames instead of an hour plus at least two repeat visits because the glasses are rubbing holes in the back of my ears.
It is well worth the hours drive to go there -and they usually have the new glasses done within 2 days.
I think that there are these little gadgets you attach to your glasses and then you can track them with another gadget.
But the gadget weighs more than my glasses, alas! And I still have no clue where they are!
Perhaps they were eaten by angry dust bunnies in revenge for the loss of bedroom habitat!
That MAY be the answer.
Without being snotty I can say that I’ve never lost a pair of glasses.
They’re been firmly affixed to my face since age 7, 60 years ago. And I guess my mother was quite firm about not loosing them because I’m a bit OCD about where they are. I wear sunglasses often now and they’re in the same place in the living room, same place in the car same place period.
And the strange thing is that after 2 cataract operations I don’t really need them but because I’m blind in one eye I wear them for protection at my ophthalmic surgeon’s insistence.
Keys, too.
Since I take my glasses off to do craft work lately, even crocheting with a large hook and two strands of yarn? I tend to knock them off the chair, or I get help from my four footed security chief. The worst times have been when I have laid down on the bed to read, fallen asleep and can’t find the glasses on the bed, due to throwing blankets around. That’s when I have to find an old pair of glasses to find the most recent pair! Ever since I sat on a pair of glasses and mangled the cheap frame, I keep a spare pair without bifocals so I can drive somewhere and have them adjusted. Due to retinal swelling, my glasses correct my left eye to 20/40 and the right is 20/20. Very annoying, another reason I take my glasses off to read, etc. I have no choice, my lenses have to be plastic. I just can’t believe how thin they are.
I’ve seen frames that come apart at the bridge, held together by a strong magnet. One puts a “string” on the ends of the ear pieces behind the neck. Need uncorrected vision? Grab the frames at the temples, pull ’em apart, and drop them on your chest. Done? Grab the two pieces, bring them back together with a click, and put ’em over your ears. I’ve seen that done in just a couple seconds. Guess it’s right for some. [shrug] Mine are always on! 😉