Presbyopia: Is smallism only for the young?
With their connotation of grandfatherly wisdom, reading glasses give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, especially when Kirk and Homer wear them. But presbyopia (farsightedness) is an unavoidable consequence of aging, and it means that eight years from now, I’m going to have to squint to read the spaceport schedule from my fourth generation iPhone.
For the occasional user, there’s this wallet-sized pince-nez version. But personally I can’t imagine fishing through my wallet every time I need to read something. It would serve as a disincentive to read, and before long I’d be asking people what was on the menu. There are also folding options, including these hideous reading-glasses-on-a-stick by Swarovski. But if I had the means and the need, I’d go with this quizzing glass. Quizzing glasses have half the lenses, and are a lot more styish. You might remember them from the famous New Yorker cover.
You can’t LASIK presbyopia away, but doing the LASIK for regular nearsightedness is said to help a bit. There is a new surgical option, however: The Acufocus inlay, a lens the size of a grain of rice which is placed under your cornea. It’s still in trial but the kinks should be out by the time I hit 40. So you can all rest easy: I’ll be fine.
Oh, and there’s exercises you can do to slow down the onset of presbyopia. But who are we kidding, really?
March 27th, 2007 at 6:06 am
Heh…my (now ex) wife - an opto tech - always told me that once I turned 40, the presbyopia would get me…and sure enough, about six months ago, when I hit 40, I noticed that I had to wear my glasses pretty much daily, instead of just for night driving or distance.