Okay, all you presbyotic Boomers still wearing Walgreen's 5 dollar reading glasses! Check this out!

[pink-o]

I just came home from the Optician with multi-focal contact lenses--and they are AWESOME!! I'm sitting here at the computer with no specs on my nose and I can see every letter perfectly. No more guessing the numbers on my combo lock at the gym. No more finding a 20 year old to read the restaurant menu. No more pulling off the sunglasses and scrambling for readers to peruse a map on the streets of Rome (the last a totally subjective anecdote, okay?) It's like the Pentecostal Preacher smacked me across the head and shouted for god to strike the demon of blindness from my imperiled soul. Hallelujah!! A miracle of sight has been bestowed upon me!!

Anyway, can't recommend it highly enough. I never wore contacts, because I had 20/15 when I was younger and just took my good sight for granted. This isn't giving me back my eye youth, but it's way better than my natural sight at age 55.

[denbot]

1. If you don't mind a personal question..

How much?

[pink-o]

10. Not cheap, I'm afraid!

1800 contacts sells them for about 480 for a year's supply. But I get a 200 dollar rebate from my job, so that lessens the sticker shock a bit!

[nolabear]

2. Me too! Are yours Bausch and Lomb concentrics?

Apparently some people can't wear them, but for me they are just wonderful. I was nearsighted to begin with, but this beats bifocal glasses any day. Welcome to the clear-sighted fold.

[pink-o]

11. I was given "Dailies"

But being a newbie at this, I don't know if there's anything better out there.

[Born_A_Truman]

3. Are they the B&L MultiFocal?

I've been trying to get hubby to try them.

[Kali]

4. WANT!

[likesmountains 52]

5. I've been wearing them for about 15 years...they are so much better than bifocal

glasses or reading glasses. I love them too. I think they cost (gas permeable lenses) about $200 but if you take care of them they last a long time...I think I have had this pair at least 3 years.

[Crabby Appleton]

6. How many fingers am I holding up?

[LeftyMom]

7. Any trick for getting a boomer to admit they need them?

Because my Dad, who is 61, can't see (or hear, that's another story) for *$(# and I haven't had any luck getting him to go get an eye exam. I was hoping he'd have to when he went to renew his DL, but they let him renew by mail, so he's got ten more years of driving around with all the sensory ability of Helen Keller before somebody at the DMV is going to make him do an eye chart.

[elocs]

8. At 57 my face has matured around wearing glasses for 50 years. I just don't like contacts.

I consider them to be a pain in the ass. When I get up in the morning I just want to grab my glasses, put them on, an go. I much prefer glasses no matter how good contacts claim to be.

[pink-o]

12. Yeah, that first time stickin' em in my eyes was not a fun experience

Also, I get up super-early to go to work, and today I knew I couldn't wear them. But I'll spend the weekend in them, and hopefully it'll become second nature. I'm still too new at this to accurately report on long-term effects. I'm just thrilled I can see so well and I'm able to take it for granted again!

[elocs]

14. When I wear contacts I look like somehow who has worn glasses for years,

but now has contacts. I think John Lennon looked that way at the end of his life. Plus, my eyes are not that big and I didn't have much margin of error for getting the contact into the eye. Then I would get into slumps where I had to put the left lens in with my right hand and the right lens with the left hand. I like to take naps too and so contacts were a problem then as well and just before I posted this I was napping when my phone rang. Ultimately, I just like the grab and go ease of glasses.

[hobbit709]

9. The plastic implants in my eyes after cataract surgery

just won't focus closeup, so I use reading glasses for that. Otherwise my vision is 20/20 at any distance beyond about 12 inches in front of me

[davsand]

22. I am facing that myself.

I have worn glasses since I was six or seven years old. I am incredibly nearsighted and have always hated it. I asked my eye doc about getting Lasik (not sure how to spell that...) one time and he told me to save my money--that once I have my cataracts taken off I will probably only need reading glasses.

Last time I went in for an exam he told me I'm probably only a couple of years away from needing cataract surgery. I'm already thinking about what style reading glasses I"m gonna get.




Laura

[seabeyond]

13. i dont get it. i need glasses to see distance now. glasses for reading now

but then when i wear those i cant see i couple feet in front anymore, and that is the only place that is good when i dont have glasses.

how do contacts for reading allow you to see that other distances

[pink-o]

16. There's 2 ways you can go with contacts. You can get a reader contact for one eye

and a distance contact for the other, and your brain will compensate. Or else you can have the progressive lenses in both eyes, which give you different levels of help for different fields of vision. I was skeptical as well, but now I'm a true believer!

[seabeyond]

20. interesting. i tried the glasses, bifocals?, that have reading and distance

BUT, they are lineless and too hard. tough to read and when driving i keep looking out of reading part.... i let those go. now i carry reading on shirt and were full distance and look over them when i want to talk to someone near.

so hard, so hard

i will keep in mind what you say next time i go to eye doctor

hubby did that. had two different contacts for both eyes....

[deucemagnet]

15. I need to get those.

I'm 44 and nearsighted, and I'm just starting to lose my close-up vision when I'm wearing my contacts. I have a pair of reading glasses I use at work sometimes, but peeking over them makes me dizzy.

[Demoiselle]

17. Do they work for Episcopalians or just Presbyotics?

Sorry. Sometimes I can't help myself.

[pink-o]

21. Well since I compared the experience to Pentecostal...LOL

Actually, I'm a secular, agnostic Jew from San Francisco (IOW, Bill O'Reilly's worst nightmare!) and if it worked for me...

[Demoiselle]

23. You know, I slid right by your pentecostal reference on the first reading!

Presbyopics did it for me because I just can't resist puns.
Your post really interests me because I've had such a weird eyesight history. Born nearsighted. Never needed glasses to read, back then. Then wore one contact so I could see the conductor at a distance while my unaided eye read the music. (Singer.) Apparently nearsighted types see better for a bit while they age and for a magical few years I didn't need glasses to read OR to drive! NOW I need different prescriptions for each. Can't do a bifocal thing. My doctor thinks my eyes are too weird for it. (That's as close as I can get to his technical reasoning.) So I currently have two different pairs of glasses hanging around my neck, if I'm lucky . If I'm not lucky I waste hours every day trying to figure out where I put one or the other.
The thought that I might be able to see properly just by popping contacts in every day sounds wonderful.
...And anybody who is Bill O'Reilly's worst nightmare is a friend of mine, by the way.

[pink-o]

24. It's ironic that sight is the sense that deteriorated in my dotage!

I always thought it would be my hearing. I wore those big Princess Leia headphones in the 70s, blasting loud rock directly into my brain. I went to gigs and stood right in front of the amps that almost threw me against the opposite walls with the bass booming. Even now, I'm the worst abuser of ear buds, I work at the airport with really loud jet engines firing up all around me, and I live in a high-decibel urban environment.

But my hearing is fine. Just had it tested last month :shrug:

Anyway, I really got tired of scrambling for glasses every time I needed a different field of vision to be clear. Good thing is, optometrists are well-versed in correcting boomer vision, since there are so bloody many of us! I have Kaiser, and they did great by me. So someone with real health care might even have better luck...

Oh, yeah. Real health care in America, what was I thinkin'????

[tigereye]

18. didn't know there were such things as multi-focal contacts... pretty cool.

[hedgehog]

19. I went to a new optician. he suggested that since my distance

vision is fine, he set me up with a contact lens for one eye for close work. I pick it up tomorrow.

[pink-o]

25. I have a friend who does that and swears by it.

She's a lot younger than I am, though!!;-)

[BurtWorm]

26. I had a multifocal lens implanted in my right eye (the result of a cataract of mysterious origin)

and now I can read without glasses in most lighting conditions. It's very nice not to have to wear glasses again. I almost wish I'd develop a cataract in the left eye so I could get another multifocal and see even better!

[marzipanni]

27. For those who prefer glasses- L( ·)( ·)K here

My big, frugal brother sent me this- two prescription glasses for $70.00 -

http://madprofessor.net/2007/08/cheap-prescription-glasses.html