Progressive Lenses

The past few months, I started noticing my eyes getting tired more often. I’ve worn glasses since high school and my prescription has always been pretty minor, but something has felt different. Sometime after turning forty, I realized I was holding pill bottles farther and farther away just to read the labels, and menus started requiring a little more squinting than I’d like to admit. I picked up a pair of reading glasses, and they helped, but it still didn’t feel quite right. So I finally went in for an eye exam a few weeks ago.

My prescription changed a bit, and the optometrist suggested I try progressive lenses to cover all the bases. I didn’t know much about them, but it sounded reasonable, so I went ahead and ordered a new pair.

Then I made the mistake of doing some research on YouTube. There were quite a few videos of people saying progressives were hard to adjust to, or even unsafe. That little seed of doubt turned into a full blown second guess when I mentioned it at work and my boss told me I should cancel my order. He said he wore them for a day and tossed them in the trash because they didn’t work worth a damn.

So just like that, I went from feeling like I had found a solution to feeling like I had wasted a bunch of money.

On Tuesday, I went to pick up my new glasses, but when I put them on I couldn’t see anything far away. Not exactly the experience you want with new glasses. Thankfully, they figured out pretty quickly that my eyes were incorrectly measured and the lenses should have been set a couple millimeters lower. They reordered my lenses, and yesterday I stopped by after work to try again.

This time was a very different experience.

After a quick training session, I walked around the store to test things out. I checked the different viewing zones and tried to find something wrong. It did take a few minutes to get used to pointing my nose at whatever I wanted to focus on, and there was a hint of nausea, probably from me over-testing everything. But overall, they felt good. Really good, actually. Everything was clear, and the glasses fit great.

When I got home, I played some Starship Troopers Bug Ultimate Bug War, and within a few minutes I completely forgot I was wearing new glasses. I wore them all evening and all day today, and honestly, I’ve got nothing but good things to say. They were easier to adjust to than I expected, and they just work. Not exactly the disaster I was warned about nor did they take several weeks to adjust.

I'm sure everyone's experience is different, but I'm impressed and happy with my decision to try out progressive lenses. I'll update this blog should anything change.