I’ve been slightly nearsighted pretty much all my life. When I started driving I got a prescription for glasses that I only wore when driving, because I see well enough otherwise and wearing the glasses all the time messed with my close-up vision. I just needed the glasses to read road signs and to see better driving at night. my prescription hasn’t changed in 30+ years, and I have a pair of glasses I keep in my car that are about that old.
Now that I’m 50, my close-up vision has gotten much worse, as it naturally does, so I have several pairs of reading glasses I keep throughout the house and at work.
But just yesterday, I was driving home from work, wearing my driving glasses as usual, when I noticed things didn’t seem all that sharp. I figured my long-distance prescription finally worsened, but when I removed the glasses, my vision was actually sharper– I could definitely read license plates and signs better without my glasses. I don’t know how much my vision improved but I definitely felt like I could see well enough to drive without the glasses.
Googling the issue, I found it’s a fairly common, natural thing to happen to certain people who have mild, stable nearsightedness from a young age, as they get older. It’s called “Presbyopia”. I even found this SD thread from a few years back: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-533686.html
I also found this scary link that said it’s a hardening of the lenses which is a precursor to “frank cataracts”. A physician says “enjoy your improved vision while it lasts, before you need cataract surgery!” Great, thanks. Hopefully I have garden-variety Presbyopia and not this: http://www.geteyesmart.org/eyesmart/ask/questions/distance-vision-improving-with-age.cfm
Yeah, I know I should see an eye doc just to get things checked out. Will make an appt. soon.
Apparently my near-sightedness has improved. Had my eyes checked two days ago and they are reducing the strength of the near part of my prescription (I use continuous bifocals). I guess either extreme can change for the better!
At 50, glaucoma and its related issues start to come into play, even for those who never reach a point where it needs to be treated.
I’d hazard a guess that your internal eyeball pressure is up a tad, pushing things into a better shape for distance vision.
(Me, I have slight signs of what might be early retinal degeneration like that caused by glaucoma - and it scares the living hell out of me, but it’s been stable for a long, long time - while having rather low eyeball pressure. My opthamologist is very jolly at having a patient who is in the tiny, narrow window where very slight pressure reduction might be helpful… and as no pharmaceutical can be assured of having such a slight effect, I am an center-target candidate for… weed. Anyway, point being that I know far too much about slight pressure variations in eyeball juice being a critical issue to vision. Even that slight softening might reduce my visual acuity in ways that are difficult to correct… but I guess another puff or two and I won’t care? Not there yet. May not get there, Great Maker willing.)
Damn you for your plain speaking common sense, man!
Anyways, made an appointment with my GP to get an eye doc referral. Stupid HMOs-- wish I could just look up an eye doc on my own, but I have to go through my GP, and that appt. alone is 3 weeks out. Probably won’t get to see an eye doc till the end of the summer.
