The Man With Two Eyes (part three)

I can see clearly now but not forever

Previously, I spoke about the crush to this author's self-esteem to have to wear glasses and then how it hurt more than my ego to wear "hard " contact lenses. I'm not going to bore you with the exaltation of discovering soft, extended wear contact lenses but I will mention that I wore them daily, for about two decades and life was problem free. I would keep them on, day and night and then after a month, I discarded them and then put in a new pair. This arrangement was great as long as I didn't do anything stupid like go swimming without goggles. Of course, like everything else in life, the good times have to finally come to an end.

Let me first let you youngsters in a little secret. No matter how good your 20/20 vision is, by the time you are about 45 years old, the old headlights begin to weaken. This means that almost everyone will have to wear at least low power reading glasses when they get older. I mentioned this sad truth because it also occurs to those (like myself) who never had to wear glasses in order to read a book.

In terms of options, first I was faced with wearing bifocal glasses. You know, the ones invented by Benjamin Franklin around 1750. With these glasses, you can read through the bottom of the lens and also see at a distance through the upper portion. The old fashion ones just looked plain weird but that's hardly the case with the newer"seamless" ones. It's a lot harder to tell that the newer ones have two sets of glass melded together.

My biggest gripe with buying eyeglasses in general is that the more features you add (bifocal, scratch resistant, tinting, etc.), the more you have to pay. You could plan to spend about $100.00 but after all the lens  features and the designer frames have been added up, you're forking over more than $500.00 and I'm not exaggerating.

And did you know that the "bifocal correction" also comes in contact lenses? I did try these things for about one day. They have to give you a free test pair in order to see if you can bear keeping them in your head. I felt so dizzy and disoriented that the next day, I had no choice but to return to the doctor.  I opted to just fill a prescription for my regular distance contacts. Unfortunately, after speaking to the dear doc again, another crazy truth was apparent. I could wear my contacts but to read clearly, I would have to put on reading glasses. I fought wearing glasses for decades and now I'd have to put glasses on top of contact lenses! This seemed like some sort of cruel joke.

And why not throw another negative in for good measure. As one gets older, one's eyes tend to get a bit drier. I've had more than one occasion when I was driving, that my contact actually popped out and sat on my cheek. I had no choice but to pull over and find a way to cleanly place it back in. It had become sadly apparent that my eyes were rejecting this foreign body that they had clung to for decades. What would this eventually mean for the future of my vision? Was I forced to return to glasses? I had gotten so used to the freedom (not to mention the vanity) of contact lenses, so this did not seem fair. But there was another alternative, though it was scary at first. The answer came in the form of eye surgery.

To be continued.......

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