cellio | new glasses

Grumble. This should not be this difficult!

Yesterday I picked up a new pair of glasses. There were obvious problems with bifocal placement, so I returned today to see what could be done. (The bifocal for my dominant eye was not centered left-right in my field of vision, among things.) They made some adjustments to the frames (so maybe my glasses are a little off-center now? can't tell).

That gave me enough to reveal the second-order problem: the bifocals are fuzzy at the old focal distance, and the new focal distance is too short. It was already short; reducing it from about 9" to 6" is Not Acceptable. This is most noticable with a computer monitor, but it applies to print too.

The ophthamologist (/optician) was there today (that's why they said I had to return today to deal with it), and he said the price of good distance vision is poorer close vision, or something like that, and really, I need to get a special pair of computer glasses. He started by saying that using a bifocal to read a computer screen is bad ergonomics anyway; I said I've been doing it for close to 30 years. He countered with "your eyes have changed in 30 years", and I responded that they haven't changed appreciably since yesterday, when this worked fine with my old glasses. He suggested that there's an adjustment period, which I was willing to grant, so I took the new glasses away again.

I don't think adjustment periods can fix focal distance, though. That is a problem. I think he's right that the distance vision on the new glasses is a little better than on the old ones, but he didn't warn me that the new prescription would impede the bifocal so. If that's a trade-off, it needs to be a customer-specified trade-off.

Why can't I have both? The bifocal is just a magnification layer on top of the base (distance) lens, but why can't we precisely control that layer? And if layering can't yield the results, is there any technological reason one can't make an actual compound lens, with part of the base lens sliced out and replaced?

I'll try the new glasses a while longer (I won't be using the computer on Shabbat, after all). Maybe I'll get lucky. But I suspect I'm going to be back in the optician's office on Monday.

Without blinking I would pay a four-digit number of dollars for user-adjustable glasses, even if I had to look like Geordie LaForge (though I'd rather not). That would give me both context-switching and adjustment over time. Depending on the specifications, I'd pay a lot more. Being able to see as well as possible is important. Is there anyone in this space of optics work who can deal with an end user (with an end-user's budget)?

Going back to the optician's "you're not young any more" comment, I asked why my coworkers my age and older don't all have two pairs of glasses, and he said my eyes are Hard in ways theirs probably aren't. (He also accused them of abusing their eyes.) His answer for me is separate pairs of glasses, but management there is an invasive hassle. I did have a pair of computer glasses once (when my employer was willing to pay for them); changing glasses every time I got up or sat down, and sometimes just while in my office but switching to speaking with a visitor or using the whiteboard, was a real hassle. And that was without the problem of carrying them around. (I didn't carry them between work and home.)

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I have a separate pair of computer glasses, and I love them. My vision is such that I can do lots of other things with them on (talk to visitors, etc) altho sitting in a big briefing room looking at something on the screen and then back at my laptop was a pain, changing back and forth. But my vision headaches from trying to keep the right spot in the multifocal lenses on the screen and seeing the whole screen with them went right away when I got the second, dedicated pair. I have my regular pair on a "granny chain" when I want to be sure I don't leave them behind.

There's something called a "zoomer" that sounds like user adjustable, but I don't know anything else about it.

I used to live with a family of opticians, and they dogged me on this all the time.
An opthalmalogist is an MD who works with diseases of the eye, like glaucoma.
An optometrist is a D.O. who specializes in optics and lenses.
The optician is the technician who makes the glasses and determines the appropriate place for your eyeball to look through the lenses (or rather, makes the place where your eyeballs naturally go the optimal place for the prescription to be.)

It sounds like the person who you're talking about is talking a lot of junk. I would go back to the optician and demand they rectify the situation or get your money back and get another pair of glasses.

Agreed. Aside from the two pairs issue, the other rational about why they aren't working sounds like hooey.

This guy is both an opthamologist and the guy who does the refractions (is that the right term?) and works out what the prescription should be. There's a lab somewhere that actually makes the lenses (and who is accountable to him); he writes the specification. I don't know what that makes him; his staff referred to him as the optician (as in "you'll need to come back and see the...", but I know he's an opthamologist too. Sounds like his staff might have used the wrong word?

Having once gotten caught between a doctor and a glasses shop over where the fault was in a bad pair of glasses (the prescription or the production), I now try to stick to places that do both. That way it's not my problem; if the glasses are wrong then they have to fix them or give me my money back, without the game of blame ping-pong.

I asked why my coworkers my age and older don't all have two pairs of glasses

Ummm, I have two pairs of glasses (sigh, I remember when I didn't need them at all): reading/computer and distance. I have been known, as conferences, to wear both pairs so that I can both read the screen and take notes.

Sigh. Yup, bifocals this year, but I'll keep the reading ones.

I have been known, as conferences, to wear both pairs so that I can both read the screen and take notes.

Yeah, that seems like the hard part: I'm in a meeting where people are using the whiteboard and I want to take notes. Now what? Presumably I have a "regular" pair of glasses (distance + bifocal) that I wear most of the time (including when, say, reading the newspaper), and I have another pair that's only for long computer or reading sessions?

I don't have any actual knowledge on the technical issues, but it sounds like you're getting buffaloed by this guy.

I'm starting to think so. It's a pity; he seemed highly reasonable (and competent) when I got my last pair of glasses from him. (Same opthamologist, different location/staff.)

My Dad has glasses with gradiation of some fancified manner, they help a lot.
Mom has prisms in her glasses, they help her a lot.

Might want a second opinion if these dont work out to working well.

What do the prisms do for her? I pretty much only know prisms as ways of doing fun things with the color spectrum.

I dont precisely know, but she went from darn-near blind with very thick lenses to confident driver in under a week. It's been wonderful to see her reading without a headache, navigating the Web, and not walking into walls ( except when reading ).
She doesnt know either, except that the doctor talked her into trying new lenses with different technology, and she is glad of it.
I really hope you get the right lens configuration. Eyeglasses are one of the reasons I am so glad to live in this time rather than years ago.

Fitting is crucial with bifocals, so it's probably worth keeping on going back until that's right.

I bitch about having to change glasses all the time: I have three pairs, varifocal, reading and computer. But it's worth it to be able to see without headaches. The computer glasses solution works for me, because I work from home, so the glasses have cheap frames and live on my desk...

Sorry, I'm rambling.

I didn't even realize (until it was too late) that once I'd picked out frames (a story in itself), they did not take any measurements for bifocal placement. I'll have to remember that for next time.

I went back today, and they are now remaking the lenses with the correct focal distance.

No advice, but I feel like growling at this guy on your behalf.

I "recently" (within the last year or so) saw someone with trifocal glasses who said they worked fine but were, for obvious reasons, more expensive. (Unfortunately I can't remember whom, so I can't just go poke them, but it may well have been one of my 20-something year old friends). Might something like that work for you, with distance stacked over computer stacked over reading? Of course you'd need fairly large lenses, which seem to be out of style... *sigh*

Worth keeping in mind; thanks. So far I have tended toward the "stick with what works" approach, but since it apparently doesn't work as well as it used to, maybe it's time for something more radical.

This optician (or whatever he is) pushed me toward smaller lenses, saying that the bigger they are the more distortion there is (at least in my prescription). I don't know what he would say about trifocals needing bigger lenses. Of course, it's looking like he won't be making my next pair of glasses, at this point.

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