Middle age enters wearing glasses
– or not
My dad is an ophthalmologist, an eye surgeon, who is now
retired. He is also a guy with a sense of humor. When I was growing
up and had a medical question, he would answer it, then quip:
”
Don’t worry, it’ll get worse.
”
Now I know what he was talking about.
Middle age enters wearing glasses – or not
My dad is an ophthalmologist, an eye surgeon, who is now retired. He is also a guy with a sense of humor. When I was growing up and had a medical question, he would answer it, then quip: “Don’t worry, it’ll get worse.”
Now I know what he was talking about.
When it comes to bodies and physical abilities, it seems like we hit a peak somewhere between age 20 and 30, which being in the flower of youth, we don’t appreciate at the time. After that, it’s all downhill – at first a gradual slide, then a sudden, steep and ever-increasing greased skid into geezerhood.
Luckily, most of me has not deteriorated to that point yet. I’m happy to say that most of my body parts are still in working order. But then there’s the eye thing.
My eyes have never quite worked right, I’m afraid. I have been nearsighted since about age 7. After getting contact lenses in high school – quite thrilling at the time – I thought all my worries were over.
That worked for a few decades. Then came middle age, with a bang and a crash.
A few years ago, while wearing either contact lenses or glasses, I found myself unable to make out type on a page – unless it was on the large side. If I took off the glasses or lenses, I could read, but then due to the nearsightedness, couldn’t see anything else.
So there was my choice: To read, or not to read? That was the question.
It was a side effect of being myopic (a fancy word for nearsighted) and getting to that certain time of life.
As most of us age, eyeballs get older and less flexible. People with normal vision get reading glasses. For me, it was a bit more complicated.
I got progressive bifocals, which helped, but I still find myself putting on glasses, taking them off, leaving them somewhere around the house and then being unable to find them.
I pretty much have stopped wearing contacts as a daily habit, since I’m pretty much always reading. Glasses are less awkward to put on and take off again as needed. Contacts are now reserved for those special occasions when I don’t need to read anything, or anything much, or can have someone else read it for me.
Sure, I could compensate for the contacts by wearing reading glasses, but what’s the point? I would still be … wearing glasses.
I tried bifocal contacts – didn’t work for me – and Lasik sounds sort of good, sometimes – except for the fact that it costs a lot of money and someone’s cutting into part of your eye, which freaks me out a little.
So … all in all, it’s cheaper to just complain about it.
But it seems quite undignified for a woman of a certain age to be putting on glasses, taking off glasses, losing glasses and putting on another pair of glasses just to find the first pair. But that’s how most of my mornings go.
And I spend a lot of time wondering why type in the newspaper has gotten so much smaller, and increasing the font size on my computer, and trying to make out those little tiny symbols and logos on Web pages.
I’m too young to be this crotchety about my eyesight.
Oh, and now you can say: “Don’t worry, it’ll get worse.”
