Tuesday 20th May 2008
Oh the unbelievable experiences I'm having with my new glasses! When you have a prescription that's as complex as mine is, there's always a possibility of trouble, but to be honest, I hadn't really been prepared for what I'm experiencing.
I've reached the age when I need to start thinking about things like reading glasses. Until now, one prescription has always been enough, and it's always been distance vision that I've had difficulties with - ok, like I can only see clearly to just before the end of my nose, but heck, that's distance of a kind. The truth be told that my sight is so bad that uncorrected, I'm registered as being partially sighted. So anyhow, as soon as I ran into trouble with the close work, and the distance vision, I felt the time had come to consider varifocal lenses. Off I trotted to the opticians, I get the test done, order the new glasses, and in due course collected them, and off I went. I had all of the talking to from the opticians - they'll be difficult to adjust to, there might be problems, etc etc, but truth be told it wasn't a problem. I took it easy over the first few days, didn't rush anywhere and paid attention to where I was putting my feet.
The first real hint of trouble was when I got to work, and found that reading the database wasn't as much of a breeze that I thought it was going to be. And, truth be told, doing the jewellery work wasn't that different to working with the old glasses, I was still moving them up and down my nose to achieve the focus I needed. I was a bit surprised by that. Then slowly, I started to notice other things that weren't going particularly well - firstly I wasn't anymore able to read at distance than before. Then I started to get what I call a sub-headache - you know the sort of thing, not bad enough to take a pill, bad enough to make you notice it. Then on Monday, frankly things deteriorated. I noticed that in Sainsbury's, I couldn't read the signs on the ceiling. I could read the first line, but that was it. Then when I got home, I couldn't read the tv guide that the cable brings up. That was the final straw, I phoned the opticians and went in this morning. Whilst I was doing that I tried on my old glasses, and found - hey presto - I could actually see better with them than with the new ones.
Firstly, they were very nice about this. They could have just told me it was trouble with the varifocals and that would have been it really, not much I could have done about it. But they did take the trouble to listen, and to re-test my eyes. And that was when we discovered that the prism that I have in the one lens is actually in the wrong lens, that the distance prescription needs to be increased and the reading prescription lessened. End result is I need an entirely new pair of glasses, which they are going to do for me free of charge - just as well really, because if they hadn't I'd've been trotting off to see what else I could do about this. You don't pay £200 + to get a new pair of glasses that last you for three months.
On the other hand it doesn't fill me full of confidence about how long these one's are going to last me...
