(Photo credit Getty embedded)
It isn’t that wearing glasses isn’t sexy. It isn’t that getting them is freakishly expensive. It’s just that having had 20:20 vision pretty much all my life needing them is a shocker.
I’m not alone in this, it seems.
When folk hit their early to mid-forties natural eye changes occur. We struggle with the ability to see at close distances; this condition is called presbyopia. It affects all middle aged people! It occurs because the eye’s lens has become less flexible, so focusing is tricky.
But trickier still is finding a pair of bins with a prescription that can replicate the eyes I’ve taken for granted for so long.
Having flirted with the idea of Specsavers and Vision Express I plumped for an independent optician. It’s always good to build a relationship with your doctor, dentist and optician. Not so much to do with them going the extra mile if you are in crisis, more to do with having a jolly good laugh at life when you’re having an internal or the dentist asks you a question mid-drilling.
My new lifestyle needs my eyes to work well. They’re having to do things they’ve never done before and my focus is all over the place. For now peering through a JVC lens, staring at lecture theatre whiteboards, scrutinizing video footage replaces get up, drive to work, look at laptop, look at world.
I know presbyopia can’t be prevented or cured – it is what it is – but reading glasses, bifocals, varifocals or contact lenses are the solutions.
I started my journey with Victoria, my optician, in January. The varifocals made me feel seasick. So we’re giving bifocals a go, at the moment, to give my brain a chance to train my eyes. I feel like a nodding dog most of the time and steam up alarmingly too; but I’m back next week for more tweaking. She’ll get me there, because at Actons, much like ‘the one-eyed man’ … the customer is king.
And as for the frames … selected in seconds!
(Photo credit Kate Silverton)
Move over Kate … just saying!
Leave a Reply