The cheapest glasses ever: the irony is not lost on me

I received the most welcomed, most needed, most pleasant glasses yesterday and the irony that they were the cheapest and quickest pair I have ever bought was not lost on me. They are absolutely amazing, especially when combined with my now indispensable baseball cap of slightly disputed provenance. My son maintains he merely lent it to me. I remain somewhat convinced it was effectively gifted. Either way, it now lives permanently on my head, when not in bed where I usually wear an eye mask.

For many years I wore prescription glasses for short sight. Distance vision was always my problem. Over time the glasses became more sophisticated with multifocal lenses and various adjustments. Then PSP happened. My balance problems arrived and my optical challenges arrived with them.

Entrance Vertical gaze palsy, one of PSP’s most defining features and something identified in my case four years ago, means that directing the eyes on the vertical axis becomes progressively harder. It is not that the eye loses its optical properties. It is that the machinery controlling where the eye points begins to fail.

With this disease, short distance also became a problem. The risk of falling meant the multifocals had to go and my regular glasses turned into prism glasses instead, prescribed primarily to compensate for that failing gaze control and the double vision that increasingly accompanies it. I have periods of double vision and only days ago wrote about it happening in the confined space of an MRI scanner.

None of the resulting eye-wear was cheap. I now have a multi-storey glasses box by my chair and constantly switch between pairs depending on whether I am watching television, using the computer or looking at my phone. Let’s face it, most of us constantly flick between long and short distance vision while watching television and checking our phones. The endless swapping became more than irritating. Each new pair brought extra costs and usually another visit to the optician, the optometrist or some other specialist whose title began with “Opt.” I have met quite a collection of them.

In recent days I have started wearing sunglasses both indoors and outdoors because the overwhelming issue above all else is bright light. It affects me in a way that is surprisingly difficult to describe. My eyes water, crust over, blink rapidly and sometimes clamp shut altogether. I just want sunglasses on all the time. It feels dramatically more comfortable, especially together with a low baseball cap blocking out whatever light dares approach from above.

My only sunglasses until now were prescription ones for distance vision, bought back when driving was still part of life. Good enough for television but hopeless for a phone screen. Everything close up became fuzzy.

So I asked my son, or more accurately practically begged him, to buy me a pair of regular but high-performing sunglasses from the mall. They are amazing. Truly amazing. I helped choose the design over video call, but there were no expensive prescription lenses involved and they were bought on a one-plus-one offer from a popular but far from luxury shop.

I absolutely love them.

They do not solve every problem. I still cannot see long distances clearly and because they are not prism glasses they are not ideal for close work or the computer either. Yet somehow I can manage the screen better by instinct because the reduction in light matters more than perfect sharpness. It also seems to help compared to the continual switching, although I simply cannot see the television properly with them. That said, I do not actually watch very much television anymore. And as for reading books in bed, that has come to a complete halt in recent weeks. My eyes are simply too watery. It is a real shame because it is something I used to love.

Eye specialists reading this will probably recoil in horror and I am certainly not advising anyone to follow my example. But this morning, in this one small area at least, I feel noticeably more comfortable.

There is also the matter of the Botox, which has been quietly doing its own work in the background. I do think there has been some improvement, even though the initial dose was deliberately low. It feels as though the rigidity and forcefulness of the eyelids clamping shut has eased slightly. They are still closing far too much and to say my eyes are crusty when I wake up would be a massive understatement. They also remain extremely light sensitive, perhaps even more so now that the eyelids are not shutting quite as tightly. But overall it does seem to be helping.

The irony is not just about glasses of course.

So much of life starts coming full circle. Costs have risen in some areas, a full-time carer being the most significant and worth every penny. Yet I no longer spend money on restaurants, clothes, travel or cars, because I am home virtually all the time. The range of choices narrows. Things become simpler, smaller, less complicated. And suddenly you find yourself shopping for things associated more with childhood than adulthood: soft foods, diapers, being wheeled from place to place.

Yet another irony.

So here I am with my favourite glasses ever. The cheapest pair I have bought in years, sitting indoors under a baseball cap of disputed ownership, hiding from the light like a man negotiating terms with the sun itself, and somehow feeling more relieved and grateful than I have for quite some time.

With this disease, this may all change tomorrow. But for now it is good.