Congratulations from Minnesota, traditional stronghold of the socially proactive Bifocal Party.

Wow. I was briefly an old person back in junior high, and then got younger.

Welcome to the wacky world of presbyopia. It's all downhill from here, ya know.

Yeah, what they all said.

I had a pair of bifocals in Jr. High too. Outgrew the need after a year, but have now worn bifocals for six or seven years now.

But I can trump all of youse, except for possibly Jim Frankel, in the Bad Eyes Sweepstakes. Four (count 'em: FOUR!) retinal detachments, O.S. (Four operations to repair, full under.) One operation to remove infected 20 year old bit of embedded silicon, O.S. (1988, full under again). One cataract, O.S., 1991. One cataract, O.D., 1996 (they like to come in pairs). One laser procedure to fix complication on cataract operation. Oh, and a detached vitrious (!), O.D., about 1996. (I didn't even *know* until then that the vitrious could even *be* detached..!).

OK, now king me.

Patrick, what are the implications for future political arguments of being able to say that you look at the world through progressive glasses?

Good question. Even more confusingly, I'm much more myopic in my left eye than in my right one. Chew on that.

("Obviously, he's much blinder to the sins of the left." "No! In fact, his glasses have a stronger correction in their left lens!" As we see, class, metaphoric consistency is best left to trained professionals.)

I dunno, Tim; Mike Ford's eyes are pretty bad. Yours may still be worse, though. And Patrick's assistant Fred has a condition where, if I understand this correctly, his corneas keep trying to peel off altogether.

On the other hand, my opthalmologist says there's a good chance I have more rods, or cones, or rods and cones, than normal. I forget which it is, but it's why I can see a gray-striped cat down a dark alley at night, Comet West by naked eye, very fine gradations of daylight colors, and little bitty motions in my field of peripheral vision.

And what does all that mean? It means nobody I know is going to feel the least bit sorry for me now that I've finally had to get glasses.

Phooey.

Gosh, if only Tim had asked, I could have told him all about the detached vitreous thing. I've had one too. Can't equal him in the operations dept, but without glasses I've been legally blind since about 1967. The fist time Jordin got a look at my prescription, *his* eyes bugged out. I have severe myopia, pretty bad astigmatism and now with added presbyopia. (According to Patrick I've been old for about 4 years now though I only turn 50 in, um, about 6 weeks.)

And Teresa, you and Jordin both. His vision has always been better than normal, but he's starting to have trouble in low light situations. Heh.

When my vitreous detached, I was afraid it was the retina as the symptom I experienced--flashes of light at the corner of my eye--had been described to me by my doctor as warning of retinal detachment. I'm at increased risk of that apparently because of the shape of my eyeballs. Anyway, the doctor told me the vitreous detaching was actually a good thing as it lessened the strain on the retina. Except for the monumentally huge floater in the middle of that eye's visual field. Which did mostly go away eventually.

Getting older ain't for sissies, but it beats the alternative.

MKK

Between Mary Kay, Tim, and the hair-raising eye horror stories of my assistant Fred Herman, I am now clutching my eyes and cringing in the corner.

As well you should! VBG

Mary Kay, pleased to meet you. Yeah; the very same symptom set as having your retina detach; a-yup. I remember it vividly. All of the troubles in my left eye date from a corncob being thrown into it at age 8; so from then on, my right eye, totally unaffected, was my "good" eye; the one I knew I could count on.

So there I was, at my desk in the Hart Senate Office Building, about 5:30pm on a Friday...when all of a sudden in my *right* eye I got the phosphenes, and the shadows, and the floaters... Damn! Scared the crap out of me. Called my opthamalogist, and managed to locate him (he was leaving for a party, the cad!). He arranged to see me the following morning, and thought we'd operate that day -- warned me about eating, etc., so I'd be ready to be put under.

So instead it was a detached vitrious.

These biological systems -- you just can't *trust* 'em, can ya?...

Patrick, is this why the font size of posts is suddenly bigger? =>

Which is fine with me, mind you, since I've just this week started wearing my glasses for computer work. The new keyboard seems to work best if I'm further away from the monitor than I used to be--and I found myself leaning in towards the monitor unconsciously, giving myself a huge crick in the neck. It's true I could scale everything up another 20% or so, but you start running out of screen real estate pretty quickly when you do that...

"Patrick, is this why the font size of posts is suddenly bigger?"

Well, duh.

While my personal eye troubles don't extend any farther than being blind as the proverbial bat without my glasses or contact lenses (a friend looking through my glasses once asked "Did your parents lose a bet with God?"), a career in laser physics has provided me with a wealth of stories about colleagues who have inventively damaged their vision. These range from the woman who sunburned her retinas working with UV lamps to the guy who burned a hole in his retina with a laser, and spent some months having the fluid in his eye replaced. Apparently, this leads to some nifty visual effects, but I think I'll pass on the chance to see them first-hand.

The joke warning label "Dang! Do Not Look In Laser With Remaining Eye!" is a standard item in the field...

Moi, I'm just wondering why Patrick felt compelled to leave me with the rather tactile image of chewing on his left eye. Bleah.

I am a piker in the lack-of-vision thing, but Teresa I do actually sympathize. I had to get glasses in my mid-20s after having had 20/20 sight before then, and having to get glasses in adulthood sucks, too. If you haven't had specs all your life there are a bunch of little adjustments and habits you must learn, or your more experienced bespectacled chums will laugh at you, quite mercilessly.

On becoming officially old, I did just turn 40 and don't feel noticeably different, yet again. My junior faculty still don't respect their elders.