Do I need bifocals?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ll start out by saying I’m 33 and male. My mom, when I asked her about this, said she had got glasses for reading in her thirties (late thirties I think) and my dad got cataracts in his late 40s*. So I’m guessing that means my family has a history of our eyes going bad early. Also, if it makes any difference at all, I’ve had glasses since I was 10 years old.
Anyways, about a week ago, I went to read something or other, probably a typical 12pt font. I held it like I normally do and noticed that when I held it up, while I could read it just fine, I almost instinctively moved it about 6 inches further away from my face. To clarify, it wasn’t blurry, it physically hurt, almost like I was crossing my eyes to read it. Since then, I’ve been noticing it more and more. Holding things like I normally would makes the muscles that move my eyes feel like they’re crossed (even if I’m just using one eye). Holding something with tiny print 6-8 inches away is painful, moving it to about 12 inches away is much better. I’ve mentioned this to a few people who basically just said ‘you’re getting older, go to Walgreens and get some cheaters’. (FTR, I tried some on, they did make reading a lot easier.)

So, my plan was to wait it out for about a year and go to the ophthalmologist instead of the Sam’s Club Optometrist for my next script update and let them sort it out. Maybe my contacts need to me adjusted? Maybe my astigmatism is playing into this? Maybe I’m getting a touch of farsightedness or presbyopia? These are things that I’ve learned Sam’s isn’t so good at figuring out. But in the past week I’ve gone from “Hey, this is annoying” to “Hey my eyes really hurt” so I might do it sooner. I’ll give it a little more time and make sure it’s not just my sinus doing something new, but I kinda get the feeling I’m just starting to get older. OTOH, I hate to go to the eye doctor now and get a new script just to need another new one in 6 months if this is just the beginning of the change. Also, I hate to get a pair of cheaters when this is my first go around with something like this and I really don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to end up with a really wrong script or find out I’m putting a band-aid on something degenerative that could have been fixed if I had had it looked at a year earlier.

Also, about a year ago I noticed that things about 3 feet away (like trying to look at a computer monitor over someone’s shoulder) were out of focus, but that could be unrelated and maybe just due to messing with my astigmatism prescription.

Also, I know a lot of people talk about taking their distance glasses off to read something close up as being one of the hallmarks of needing reading glasses, but I can’t do that. My eyes, WRT distance, are more then a full diopter different from each other so doing that just makes everything look weird. Close up, far away…with my depth perception off, I can do much of anything with both eyes open.

So, bifocals or just my eyes straining for some reason? Again, just to clarify, it’s not blurry (unless it’s really close) it just hurts and I have to move things a bit further away then where my muscle memory puts it. When I get home tonight I’m going to try an actual book with my glasses on just for a change of pace to see if that tells me anything.

Also, does anyone have any experience with bifocal contacts? Not putting a different lens in each eye but they now have actual bifocal contacts, I don’t understand how they work, but if they aren’t $200 a box, I might be interested in something like that.

Last time I saw the ophthalmologist my dad sees he specifically reminded me that dad/family (normally I just go to Sams Club to get a vision check/script renewal and go there every few years) got cataracts very early and that I need to pay attention to that over the next 10 years or so and as someday when I’m about 40 I’ll probably wake up with blurry vision and I need to call him as soon as that happens…but I don’t that that’s what this is.
ETA, looks like multifocals are $80 a box whereas the same brand of ‘regular’ contacts are $30.

2

I hate to say it, but I bet you do.

I asked a similar questions a couple years ago.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=646198

The added expense isn’t welcome, nor is the cold water to the face of getting older.

3

I’ve had two kidney stones in the last year and I’ve started making the younger kids at work doing my (literal) heaving lifting because everytime I do it I mess up my back and up hurting for two days. I’m at peace with ‘getting older’. However, in your thread you mentioned things are blurry until you take off your glasses. In my OP, I mentioned I can see just fine, it’s just painful. I’m trying to figure out if that’s the same thing or something different.

I’m also sort of trying to figure out if I should wait a little while for it to get worse if I should just go in now.

4

you can likely get bifocals and functional frames for about $200. if your eyes are changing a prescription might be good for two years.

if you do some only distance and only close then you might switch between two single vision pairs.

if you are always doing some of both and driving then bifocals are good.

also if you do some reading and medium distance, like reading at one foot distance and computer monitor at two foot distance then trifocals might be useful. or bifocals for just the computer with two and one foot distances.

5

I’m aware of what’s out there, what I’m trying to figure out is whether or not I need them…maybe without spending $120 at the eye doctor.

So, as soon as I got home I took out my contacts and within an hour my eyes felt much better. Whether that’s because my contacts were bugging me and I took them out or because I just haven’t been reading anything for an hour, I’ll never know. Eitherway, I can now try the whole ‘taking my glasses off to look at close up thing’ now.

Looking at something, with my glasses on, about 8 inches away from my face is clear and I can feel myself straining bit to do it. Taking my glasses off makes it clearer and there’s less strain. What’s interesting is that it’s not so much that it’s clearer, it’s that it got slightly bigger. When I played with the cheaters at Walgreen’s today (with contacts in) they did the same thing, made everything just a big bigger.

That’s really all I can reliably test on my own. Once something is more then about 18 inches away from me, I can’t read it with out my (distance) glasses on, it’s just too blurry. Actually, I take that back, I know my left eye is a bit better so I tried it that way. With something about 18 inches or so away, using only my left eye, it was a bit blurry, took my glasses off and after about a quarter or a half second it came into focus, or as in focus as it could without glasses on. But I really couldn’t tell if it was more in focus or just bit bigger. It was sort of like being at the doctor and having them say “1 or 2” and you say “Um 2 I think, should it be 2, wait are they the same?”

I suppose maybe that warrants an appointment, huh. OTOH, I could just stop putting things so close to my face. It was just weird that first day when I held something up (at whatever the distance was I haven’t measured anything, I’m just guessing) and I moved it further away to relax my eyes and I knew something was up as soon as I did that.

6

Can you use cheap reading glasses with your contacts in?

7

From someone who doesn’t know much about this kind of stuff (me), I can’t see why not. ISTM (and I could be wrong) that it would be the same as someone with good (distance) vision using reading glasses, right?

But I think I would still schedule an eye exam before I’d pick up a set of those. Like I said earlier, I’d like to have A) a starting point and B)the knowledge that I’m not putting a band-aid on some bigger problem.
IOW, I’d like to see a doctor and have him say “Yup, just go pick up a set of +1.00 glasses for $10 and you’ll be fine and come back in a year when it’s worse” rather then putting it off for a year with cheaters and having him say “Oh, you have a cataract, too bad you didn’t come in a year ago now we’ll have to remove your eyeballs, that’ll be thirty two thousand dollars.”