I’ve been using reading glasses for a few years, now. I think I bought them in 2016. I used to read a lot. Then I started disliking it. It must have taken me a year or two before I realised what was happening. I was getting a headache! The glasses took some getting used to, but so far so good.
Sadly, the age-related deterioration of my eye sight kept picking up speed and when I started doing home office this year, began to sit in front of a small laptop screen for hours instead of hooking it up to a large monitor that is more than an arm’s length away from my eyes, I had to put on my reading glasses while sitting at the laptop, too.
Over the weeks, I started to get more headaches, though. Headaches when I got up and walked around. Headaches when I tried to do the dishes or cook. Sometimes the reading glasses just didn’t seem to help. I decided to see an ophthalmologist, an eye specialist. They suggested “working glasses”. Depending on the angle, a different distance is in focus. So if you look up, it’s up to 1½m, and if you look down, it’s closer, better for reading.
I agreed to that and went to an optician, ordered those glasses. They’re about as expensive as an iPhone, or a good laptop – a bit more than CHF 1000! My father in law tells me that his glasses are even more expensive. That was a surprise.
A week later I got my glasses. And I’m not sure I like them. I was told that physics prevents the glasses from working when I look sideways. No problem, I thought. The example offered was me reading notes and then looking to the left or right at a presentation. I get it. But what I didn’t expect was that I have to move my head from left to right and back as I read on the laptop screen. The screen is close; close enough for the line width to prevent the glasses from working.
So now my head moves a little left and right, a little up and down, as I try to get the letters in to focus. My head still hurts. I feel like my body is failing me.
I’m reminded of an article I wrote back in 2018, To the Young Ones. I feel like this is a continuation.
I did not understand. I was chuckling as older coworkers kept putting on their glasses and taking them off again. I smiled as older people couldn’t read the menu at the restaurant because they had left their reading glasses at home. I thought people looked silly as they looked over the rim of their glasses.
Old age, here I come. 🖕
#Life