Presbyopia in a Pandemic
So now I am farsighted as well as being nearsighted. Blah. I’ve been trying to get progressive lenses but my reaction to my first pair in February was this mix of “WOW, I can see close up!” and “AGHGHEHAH the world is spinning out of control! Make it stop!”
I’d wear them for 20 minutes and rip them off in frustration. The close-up “in-focus” area is so freaking small! It’s like 1/3 of the width of any 8.5″x11″ paper I’m reading. I can’t wiggle my nose back and forth fast enough to read at a reasonable rate! And I can’t see well outside that area!
Walking around with them makes me dizzy. And looking at a computer screen is weird and frustrating, tilting my head up and down, left and right to try to catch everything. And stuff wiggles and shifts under my gaze in a slightly disorienting way. Not luvin ’em. I’m not sure if this is going to work out :-(
After 2 weeks, I got them adjusted to be closer to my eyes and that helped a little but not nearly enough.
I likened wearing my progressives to wearing my head mounted magnifiers. 
They’re really useful but only good for one thing: looking really closely and carefully at stuff. I -can- wear them for an hour or so but why wear clown-goggles when I can wear my single-vision glasses? Bah!
Roanne has been helping me a ton. When optometrist offices open after the pandemic, I’m going to get some “occupational lenses” with a large near-field. In the mean time, Ro got me some +1 diopter clip-on reading glasses to wear over my current glasses. They were like $12 on Amazon. After a few *seconds* of acclimating, they are great!
I’m now wearing 2 pairs of glasses that don’t have anti-reflective coatings, it’s hard to keep them clean but well worthwhile!
I had asked my friends on Facebook what they thought of progressives and got a wide variety of answers!
Chris D wrote: After several weeks, you’ll stop getting mildly disoriented. I’ve had them for close to 10 years and never had any of the worst warned effects (tripping over curbs, rear-ending cars, etc.) but they weren’t easy to get used to at first. Suffer through, it’s definitely worth it long term.
Zee K wrote simply: I hated them.
Most of my friends were able to get used to them, but some were not. We’ll see how it goes!