Vision Quest
Posted on | July 13, 2009 at 9:22 pm | 17 Comments
Some of you may remember my anti-LASIK tirade from a few years ago. Since then, my eyes have continued to get worse, both the near and distance vision. The steady deterioration of my near vision means that I have to wear reading glasses for almost any closeup work. My distance vision is still good enough that I can drive without glasses and can get by in most circumstances where I rely on it, but I’ve noticed that I don’t see the sharpness of landscapes and HDTV images and such like I used to.
I’m getting tired of taking the reading glasses on and off all the time. I kind of long for that pre-LASIK time when I had one pair of glasses that I kept on at all non-sleeping times. Sure, it was a hassle trying to find the bathroom in the middle of the night sometimes, but I think that beats trying to read something and having to search out some glasses. I want an all-in-one solution to my vision needs, even if it means going back to wearing glasses “full time”. Oh, I still want to go without glasses when working out at the gym or doing other sports-type things (one good thing about the LASIK), but for everything else, I could definitely go back to the 4-eyes scenario.
So at my annual vision checkup this year, instead of going with another pair of reading glasses to cover just the degradation in that area, I decided to go with a pair of progressive lenses. They have a tall area at the top of the lens for magnifying distance vision, and a gradation of zones at the bottom of the lens for helping with various close-up and reading issues. The doctor said I should be able to wear them all the time. And indeed, they’re fantastic for almost everything. It’s not that big a difference when driving, but it’s enough to be noticeable. I can read street signs and license plates and such that are a bit further away than I used to. But the best thing about using them when driving is I can now read the dashboard and the multi-function display a lot easier, just by tilting my head up a bit. I no longer have to struggle to figure out the name of the song on the MFD playing from the iPod. It also makes texting-while-driving a lot easier. (Just kidding.)
And I’ve also noticed that wearing them around the house improves my TV-watching and videogame playing experience. I feel like I’m getting the full HDTV experience for the first time since buying my plasma TV and PS3/BluRay. I no longer have to sit on a bean bag chair in front of the TV to see all the enemies on screen when playing videogames. And I can actually read while watching TV, without having to take glasses on and off! (Yes, sometimes I multitask.)
I also find that using the new glasses to read in general works better than my old reading glasses, especially for graphic novels. Although that could just be because my prescription has gotten worse.
So, the glasses have changed my life in a very positive way and I adjusted to them very quickly. However, they’re not the all-in-one solution I was hoping for. The one thing they don’t work well for is computer work. In order to read a computer screen with the glasses, I must have my head tilted up at an uncomfortable angle. And even then, the zone of sharpness is not very large, and any head movement at all makes me lose it. This is very headache-inducing. So, I still need to wear reading glasses when I’m at the computer. And seeing as how my work involves staring at a computer screen all day, and I’m also at the computer a lot for personal reasons, that’s a large chunk of time having to wear a different pair of glasses. Bummer.
I talked to the doctor about possibly getting a pair that would also work for computer work, but that would be difficult. They’d have to move the mid-range zone up on the lens, which would take away from the distance zone above and would probably also mess up the closeup zone below.
So I’ve gone from two vision situations (reading glasses, no glasses) to three (reading glasses, no glasses, progressive glasses). Although really the “no glasses” situation applies only to the gym and sleeping these days. I’m having trouble adjusting to switching to the progressives when I’m away from the computer. Keeping a pair of reading glasses next to the computer is not a big deal, but for some reason I always forget to keep the progressives handy too, especially at home. At the office I usually don’t have that problem.
This has definitely caused some mixups. I was playing a videogame yesterday and needed some help getting through part of it. So I went to the computer and looked up something on the Internet. When I got back to the video game, I was having a hard time and getting a headache. I chalked it up to the fact that the section of the game I was playing had a lot of snow obscuring the action. Finally, N walked into the room holding my progressives and said, “Don’t you need these?” I had been playing the game while wearing the reading glasses, which I had put on while at the computer. Ha ha – I’m such a Plugger!
Even though there are problems, I’m looking at this as a positive development. It’s opened up my world in a way that hasn’t happened since I got my first pair of glasses in high school, or right after I had the LASIK operation when I could still read without reading glasses (a time period that didn’t last long).
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: The amount of tweaking you have to go through when changing WordPress themes in order to still get things to work like you want them to. I think I finally got this new theme working okay, but it took a little fiddling around. Good thing I know some PHP and am beginning to figure out stylesheets. And now I don’t feel so beholden to any one particular theme and can probably change themes a little easier now.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “you crush me 2009″.
Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: I’m playing an awful lot of God of War 2 lately on my PS3, even though it’s a PS2 game. I never did play it when it came out, so I figure I should finish it sometime before GoW3 for the PS3 comes out next year.
Comments
17 Responses to “Vision Quest”
July 13th, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
Didn’t get an RSS update for this.
July 13th, 2009 @ 10:28 pm
Weird – it showed up in my readers. The theme shouldn’t have anything to do with the RSS feed.
July 13th, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
How long have you had the progressives? My new glasses have those – while most adjustments took very little time (within a week), some of the trickier items gradually improved over about a month or so. (Your eye doc should have told you this…) Computer work was one of the last things to really snap into place. At first, like you, I couldn’t quite get the hang of how to do it. Essentially, though, over time your brain gets trained in the adjustment it needs to make – now, I don’t have any problems with them at all.
My eye doctor’s advice was to wear the progressives all the time in order to help the brain learn to adapt to them. So if you’ve been switching off, that actually just makes things worse. (You probably recall reading about the wonderful experiment in which subjects were given glasses that rendered the world upside-down: naturally, at first this was nearly impossible for them to deal with (obviously, they were isolated and not out driving Hummers about); but after a short while, everything seemed normal to them. Of course, when the experiment came to a close (or rather, its first part), the normal way of seeing seemed to them as if…that’s right, the world was upside down. In other words, the brain can do quite a bit with vision!
July 14th, 2009 @ 12:43 am
It did pop up on my feed at 10:18.
July 14th, 2009 @ 2:33 am
“Progressive scan” glasses, hmmm? What, they play DVD’s?
Ditto what 2fs said. It takes a while to get used to computer monitors with your progressives. You learn to put your head in the correct position eventually. The usable left/right range is narrow, and any tilting of the head will mess you right up.
Also agree you should probably just have progressive glasses and either use them or nothing, not switch to various glasses. I got the anti-reflection coating and the automatic tinting on my progressives and it’s very nice (except, as always, auto-tinting doesn’t tint when you’re driving… I have clip-on sunglasses for long stretches of daytime driving).
The problem I have now is getting new frames. The frames I got many years ago in Lakewood are wearing out. Apparently simple small oval’s in plain metal are just not being made lately.
July 14th, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
Okay, I’m trying it your way today, guys. We’ll see how it goes. It doesn’t help that I started out the day with a bad headache, and this isn’t making it any better.
July 14th, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
Fixed. I’m surprised I didn’t accidentally stick that in more often, since it was constantly on my mind while composing the entry.
July 15th, 2009 @ 1:40 am
I don’t think you can try it our way “today”. You need to give it a couple weeks at least.
July 15th, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
I thought you were going to say “There is no Try, there is only Do”.
I had to try it for a little while to see if it’s possible at all, since I can’t afford to lose any work productivity. I found that I was able to work okay at the office on my laptop, since the screen ends up being low and I don’t have to move my head up much. At home, it’s a different story with both my home PC, and my work laptop in the docking station. I’ve had to rearrange things so that the monitor screens are down lower. And even then, I’m still holding my head up at a somewhat uncomfortable level. But initial impressions suggest it seems doable. At least I’m adjusting to the actual vision part okay – the hard part is the head positioning.
July 15th, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
I would also say that if this doesn’t work, you should definitely talk to your optometrist for suggestions. It’s possible either that you’re one of the few who can’t quite adjust to progressives, or that your vision is such that you need different glasses for computer work. If the latter, obviously opt for the most expensive fashionable eyewear available. Wait – I meant, the opposite of that.
Remember: everything anyone tells you on the internet is…true! (Including that statement!)
July 17th, 2009 @ 11:27 am
When’s flasshepoint mobile launching? Auto- detect iPhone please.
I’m such a lamer. I should be hosting my own blog so I can do some of that customization. One more “free time project.”
As for the vision, I hear ya. I hate glasses, but they’ve saved me from a few pokes in the eye, so they’re good for that! My twighlight vision is bad, esp for driving. And when I’m on the PC all day (most days) it takes forever to be able to focus on distant objects again. With diabetes, vision can be unstable, so I’ll probably never get Lasik or whatever’s in vogue. I see progressives in my near-sighted future. At least I think I do… It’s kind of a blur.
July 17th, 2009 @ 11:28 am
Way to go Nance, for keeping the ol’ plugger in line!
July 22nd, 2009 @ 6:57 pm
Bah bah, bah bah, bah bah, I told you not to spend all of that money on lasik, you could have goes to Vegas!!!
July 22nd, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
Well you should’ve kidnapped me then, Kenny! Although I’m always afraid of waking up the next morning and not knowing what happened the night before.
July 23rd, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
Flasshe – re your last comment, that means either you’ve been watching old reruns of _The Prisoner_ too much, or you’ve been drinking again.
July 24th, 2009 @ 9:40 am
Can’t it be both?
Vision Quest update: I have been using the new specs exclusively when on the computer, and am actually adjusting to it. The biggest problem is still keeping my head tilted up, but I’m getting used to that.
August 5th, 2009 @ 6:52 pm
I’ve used progressive lenses for years. I wouldn’t go back.