In recent years, I’ve been struggling a little bit with my eyesight.
I’ve been nearsighted all my life, just like my Mom. I remember I once told my Mom when I was a child that at least as we get older, while other people get farsighted, for us the two will cancel out; and who knows, we may not even need glasses after a while.
Alas, that’s not how things work.
Myopia and presbyopia are not mutually exclusive. Just because you are nearsighted does not mean that your eye cannot lose its ability to focus. So you remain myopic, in need of glasses to see things that are afar; but the same glasses are no longer useful when you are staring at things up close.
So like many others at my age, I ended up with graduated prescription glasses: the top of the lens is meant to see far, whereas a lesser diopter is used at the bottom to help see things up close. Of course it also means that like many others in their fifties, I end up adopting that strange posture of holding my head up while reading a book in my hands, just to make sure that I look at the book through the appropriate part of the eyeglass lens.
And, I found, graduated glasses are by no means a perfect solution when it comes to staring at a computer screen. I found that I kept having to change the angle at which I kept my head, as I looked at different parts of the screen. It was frustrating and inconvenient, and indeed, it was interfering with my productivity.
Recently, I got a new pair of graduated glasses, in the hope that they will fix the problem, but they really didn’t.
So then, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I’ve known about a site, clearlycontacts.ca, for some time; they offer prescription glasses at a fraction of the cost you pay at a retail eye-wear store. So I ordered a new pair of “reading” glasses from them. Except that instead of giving them the “correct” prescription (+2 diopters for reading on both eyes relative to the baseline value for my myopia) I specified a smaller correction, halfway between the “reading” and the farsighted values.
The new pair of eyeglasses arrived Monday morning. As I opened the box, I was trying to tame my expectations; after all, you’re not supposed to play eye doctor with your prescription. I opened the box, took out the new glasses, put them on, and… WOW. I can finally see my entire screen clearly, without having to hold my head at unnatural angles. And the eyeglasses are almost good enough for reading, and not too bad for far vision either; my vision is a bit blurry with them, but I can still read, e.g., roadside signs, so these new glasses might even be safe for use while driving, at least in an emergency.
But for the computer screen, they are just perfect. And I already noticed a significant increase in my productivity, simply because my eyes and my neck don’t tire out as I work.
And the price of this little eyeglass adventure? A grand total of 58 dollars and 95 cents. Less than 60 bucks. And that price actually included scratch-resistant lenses.
Needless to say, I am very pleased. Indeed I am sufficiently pleased to provide clearlycontacts.ca free advertising in the form of this blog post. I am sure they don’t mind.