Seeing Better By Degrees.

This afternoon I picked up new eyeglasses, with new lenses that were prescribed following a vision test done 3 weeks after (successful) cataract surgery.  I’m seeing non-fuzzy for the 1st time in weeks.

During the vision test, I reminded the ophthalmologist that I’m crosseyed, that my old eyeglasses incorporated 4 degrees (out) of prismatic correction in the left lens plus 6 degrees (out) in the right lens. The doctor held up a 10-degree prism right in front of 1 eye & then the other while I focused on a point in the middle distance, & he watched my eye movements as he blocked my eyes 1 at a time in alternation.  “Yes,” he said, “you still need 10 degrees total, but let’s make it 5 + 5 rather than 4 + 6.”  So that’s how he wrote the optical prescription for all 3 new pairs of eyeglasses.

The glasses I picked up this afternoon are specialty bifocals, with distance prescription on top & midrange prescription in a raised inset — for reading music. Midrange is perfect for seeing sheets of music in front of me on a music stand. The midrange inset is raised just enough so that my view through that section, right up to the top line of the inset, puts everything in focus up to the top of the music stand. Above that, the part of the lens ground for distance lets me see clearly over the top of the music stand where I can view the maestro waving his baton.  There is no close-up (reading) lens.

As it happens, the only glasses ready to pick up today were the music glasses, even though I ordered new everyday trifocals at the same time. So I won’t be doing any conventional reading for a few more days. The new music glasses are OK for driving & watching TV & using the desktop computer, so the inconvenience is minimal.

New everyday trifocals — distance + midrange, + close-up (reading) — should be ready in the next day or 2.  At the same time I picked up the completed music glasses, I ordered new computer bifocals (reading + midrange — no distance), so maybe those will be ready by the end of the week, I don’t know.

In any case, it’s great to be seeing things clear & bright & in sharp focus once again.  Nothing like peering through obsolete eyeglasses for 3 weeks to stoke one’s appreciation for up-do-date glasses fitted with just the right optics — not to mention the clarity of vision provided by precision artificial lenses that were surgically implanted in place of my old cataract-clouded natural lenses.