Patti S. is a member of VSP's Ophthalmic Services team.

It’s difficult to wander down the aisles of almost any store without encountering racks of “high-fashion” frames bearing the answer to your presbyopic woes. Those drug-store readers beckon to many an unwary baby-boomer with promises of visual youth regained behind suave, yet sprightly, frames bejeweled with little glittery things all over. They may alleviate the frustration of small print and short arms, but do you really know what you’re not getting when you opt for this quickie fix to a problem that you’ll have to contend with for many years?

You don’t need a doctor’s prescription because you can just experiment until you find a pair that suits your elegant tastes and helps you see better. This might be OK when you’ve forgotten your prescription glasses at home and need something to get by with on vacation. If you’re foregoing regular eye exams, though, you’re cheating yourself out of something that has the potential to identify diseases such as diabetes, glaucoma, brain tumors, and high cholesterol, to name a few.

I understand that these glasses provide some relief and they’re a lot less expensive than the triple whammy of an exam, ophthalmic frames, and custom-made prescription lenses, but the lenses you get in over-the-counter specs are approximations of your genuine prescription. There are so many possible combinations of prescriptions and unique facial measurements that comprise quality eyewear that can’t be addressed with drug-store readers. Some doctors do recommend them, but they also know your prescription and eyes and can make that call. For the rest of us, consider these points the next time you’re drawn to those cheetah print frames you see when paying for your gas:

• The distance between your pupils—without this crucial measurement, you’re probably adding prism to your lenses. Prism affects your eye muscles.
• Prism—if you really need it, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll accidentally get it right in cheaters.
• Cylinder—if you have astigmatism (and most do), you won’t get it in a pair cheaters.
• Cylinder—here’s a catch, cheaters often do have induced cylinder as a result of the imprecise optics in cheap lenses, but most likely not what the doctor would order.
• Warped lenses—what can I say? They’re bad.
• Frame quality—they’re typically not of ophthalmic quality or what those of us in the biz call “non-Rx-able.”

If you must have easy access to an assortment of cheap glasses, get them at your local dollar store and stash them in your junk door in case you need something to for dirty jobs, like changing the oil in your car. Then again, you could always get real lenses put in an old frame for that.

Patti S. is a member of VSP's Ophthalmic Services team.

I had a friend tell me once that she found eyeglasses egodystonic .  “That’s unfortunate,” I thought, “because, you’re getting old and we all know that like hairy ears and sagging buttocks,   presbyopia is but one harbinger of our gradual physical decline.”  I didn’t say it out loud because a tendency for over-emotionalism also often accompanies the plight of the aging.  At any rate, I put on my optician’s hat and advised her of her options: mono-vision contact lenses or laser surgery, a secret stash of reading glasses, refraining from anything requiring near vision, or sucking it up and getting a pair of specs.

With long teeth, she saw her eye doctor and then embarked upon a tear-laden journey to find frames that would not disrupt her lens-free self-image.  Naturally, I assumed she’d find something nearly invisible, like a pair of drilled rimless mountings that would perch imperceptibly on her petite little snout.  That was not to happen.  Miss Egodystonic found the haute couture equivalent of the optical world and availed herself of their exotic wares.  Not only was she old, but she was bold as well.  As an added bonus, she could read again.

What happened with my friend is what generally happens with most people in the process of getting new glasses.  They think of the frames and how those frames will mesh with their own self-perception.  In the preceding case, that self-image was satisfied by disguising the clinical nature of the lens problem with wild and crazy frames.  (Either that or she was lying, and a genuine lens prescription brought to fruition her secret lifelong desire to sport tacky eyewear.  I can’t be sure.)

Although she voiced objection to glasses, citing her “egodystonic” thing, she really did have an idea about what her personality and personal style could tolerate—and then she sought and found it.  Fortunately, her prescription worked with her eccentric style and a heavenly match was made.  Sometimes, though, personal tastes and function are incompatible, but I’ll talk about that later.