Remember my great spectacle debacle?

And the update being that the optometrist would (begrudgingly) order in non-multifocal lenses with a similar prescription to my old ones, only slightly stronger... although seeing I am getting SO OLD, it is inevitable that I will need either multi-focals, or separate glasses for different purposes... before very long?

Well, today I went in to get these new replacements put in.

It was with some apprehension that I waited for the assistant to place them on my face....after all this recent palava... but WHOA!.... I didn't expect it to be THIS BAD. You know what it is like to pick up someone's glasses and put them on, and the vision is all whacko and distorted? That's what it was like.

What. The. Hell?

"This is... terrible..." I said.

"Well... I don't know...", she says. "Often new prescriptions take a bit of getting used to..."

"Yes...yes... I know... but... I've had glasses since I was 10, and I've never had anything THIS bad.... This is really really bad. I couldn't wear these for anything..."

She looked again at his prescription notes...and sighed. "Well, it's Wednesday again, the optometrist isn't here today... all I can do is put the multifocals back in, and he will have to review it tomorrow..."

She took them back to the work bench... and it was all I could do not to bang my head on the counter... FFS, I'd only gone in for an eye checkup because I thought I should after a few years. It wasn't because I was having any problems with my glasses. Perhaps I'll have to ditch this guy and go back to my old family optometrist (and former neighbour) when I am visiting my parents in Sydney in June or July.... Meanwhile I'll have to put up with these frigging multifocals, which have improved a bit with the peripheral vision when I'm at the computer, but reading?! - which is the whole reason he thinks I need them because he thinks my old type prescription can't cut it with the reading as well. It's total CRAP! Can't spread out the newspaper at the table and read it, because I can't find an optimum focal length. Same with even a book...! This is just .... HOPELESS. I've gone backwards! But SERIOUSLY...why am I apparently so hypersensitive about these lenses? How can my eyes have gone this whacko, I mean, I know I'm peri-menopausal, but I seriously don't recall ever seeing 'optically neurotic' in the list of symptoms...

(Indeed, I could tell by her demeanour that this assistant had relegated me to the category they secretly call 'THE NEUROTIC PATIENTS'. )

Suddenly from over at the work bench she says... "Hang on... I think I might have solved it.

"Um... usually lenses aren't symmetrical... but these... are....and I think I've...."
Got them round the wrong way?! Left in the right, right in the left?... Yes, that might make a bit of difference when you've got one shortsighted eye, and one long sighted eye!!

"Um... try this.."

Well, bloody hell, THAT'S more like it.

Yes.. slightly weird (like I have experienced with every new prescription over the past 35 years!)... but you can tell your eyes will adjust.

"I'm so sorry!" she said.

"That's ok... thank heavens! ... but sheesh... I really don't need any help with feeling any more neurotic than I already do."

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And I am wearing them since I got home, and halle-bloody-lujah, they are good. I can look around the room with them. I can read a book or magazine with them. I could read the newspaper with them. I can watch the TV with them.