My foray into the world of bifocals/progressive lenses didn’t last long. Tried the monovision thing with the contacts, and it was a disaster — my dominant eye has astigmatism, so that was all blurry, and the undercorrected eye was all blurry, and my vision when reading was terrible. The undercorrected eye was supposed to be for reading, but it was so undercorrected that I had to hold things very close to read them clearly, because if I held them at the distance I usually do, it was too *far* for me to see them clearly. And I just couldn’t get used to the two different fields of vision — I felt like I couldn’t see very well at either distance, and since I wasn’t really having problems with my close-up vision prior to this whole experiment, it made me realize that if I did get the progressives, I’d be worse off than I was before. For a lot of money.
So I called up the optician to cancel the progressives, which were ordered Monday. I got some static from the assistant, who was the person I spoke to, because the lenses had already been ordered and I hadn’t called earlier. I explained that I had been unable to assess the whole monovision thing until Tuesday, because I’d been told to keep my contacts out of my eyes for a few days. She told me that the progressives didn’t work the same way as the monovision contacts. I said, essentially, no duh. I told her she needed to cancel the order for the progressives and I needed to get a regular contact lens for my left eye because not only couldn’t I see, I was getting a bit seasick. She told me that the doctor — who’s only in on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and here it was Wednesday afternoon and it didn’t look like I would be getting back to Brooklyn any time soon — would have to fit me for a lens, because she didn’t have the proper measurements for my left eye. I told her that was ludicrous, because that same doctor had examined me only a few days before, and if she knew how much to undercorrect my left eye, she would have the measurements. This made no impression on the assistant.
I believe I may have made an accusation that I felt I was being pressured into getting these expensive lenses which would make me see worse than previously, and now the assistant was trying to coerce me into taking them because she’d placed the order. This got me a call from the doctor promptly after she came in for the day, during which she took exception to any insinuations of pressure tactics, but fortunately confirmed my suspicion that she did, in fact, know my left eye’s relevant measurements, having collected such information during the exam, and that she could provide me with a new lens so I could see. After another attempt to explain the virtues of progressive lenses preemptively, as in “make the investment now, because your eyes will get worse now that you’re an old bat,” and an unnecessary reminder that the progressive lenses do not work the same way as the monovision contacts — which, again, no duh — she told me that she had ordered a trial pair of the astigmatism-correcting lenses and hoped to have them by Saturday.
I hadn’t anticipated being able to pick up the contact until tomorrow, but I found myself with just enough time to get to Brooklyn between my LIS orientation and another engagement tonight, so I went to pick up the lens and get the refund for the progressives. The optician, who owns the joint, was extremely accommodating about the refund. Which is nice, because I’d gotten a bad impression from the assistant and the optometrist.
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