A mammoth undertaking

I got a new pair of glasses two years ago, the first for many years, and to be honest I’ve never really got on with them. The prescription was too much of a compromise, so neither my distance vision nor my near vision was as sharp as I thought it should be. In fact, when I was doing some embroidery last year, I frequently ended up taking my glasses off and holding the work close to my face so that I could see it clearly enough! That was annoying, but manageable. However, when I felt my distance vision getting worse too, something had to be done as I need to be able to drive safely!

I had an eye test, and was completely unsurprised to be told that my vision had deteriorated and that my old prescription was no longer suitable. What was less expected was to hear that my near and distance vision prescriptions had diverged so much that they couldn’t give me a single-vision lens that would cover both requirements. My choice was between bifocals/varifocals or two separate pairs of glasses. I’m not yet ready to accept that I’m old enough for bifocals, so two pairs it was.

My distance pair are much better for driving than the previous ones – anything over about two metres away looks sharp and crisp, and the lens is (so far at least) much less scratched, so that there is less dazzle from oncoming lights. And my reading pair aren’t bad either – fine for playing on my iPad or reading a book/newspaper. I struggled using the desktop computer at work though – I found I either had to sit really close to the screen or awkwardly far away, depending on which set of lenses I was wearing. So I ended up going back to the opticians and getting a third pair of spectacles, purely for computer use!

Now of course, the problem is that whatever I want to do, I’m inevitably wearing the wrong pair of glasses! If I’m typing away at work on my computer and someone comes over to my desk to talk to me, I can’t see them properly so the first thing I do is have to change glasses. Or I’ll be sitting at home reading when the phone goes in the other room and I have to get up to answer it, and can’t see clearly. Or I’ll have my distance pair on when I get in, pick up the post, put have to change my glasses again before I can read the contents. I’m sure I’ll get used to it in the end,  it at the moment it’s driving me round the bend!