Tuesday 8 January 2019

New Year New Look

2018 is now officially in the books. The holidays are over. We've tossed out the final page of the old calendar, and now have 12 fresh, new pages to confront us.

I am not one for resolutions; at this point, I have come to a sort of detente with time. Each year is, despite my best efforts, likely to be very similar to the one that just concluded, and ultimately, time is going to win anyways.

One thing that has changed - on the final day of the year, I went to have a new prescription for my glasses made. My last visit to the optometrist was in the end of 2016, so it was time. Like time, I am fighting a gradually losing battle with my vision, and thus, the glasses I got in December of 2016 are no longer up to the task. I could no longer read my monitor at work.

Worse still, my vision has now got to the point where I simply am unable to read anything in less than 20 point type unless I hold the thing an arm's length away. This does not work in restaurants (two weeks ago, I ordered a pizza on-line using my phone, and even with the help of my 13 year old to read what the options were, wound up with a mushroom and onion rather than a pepperoni pizza).

I now sleep with my eyeglasses on the table next to the bed in case I get a call or message overnight.

The exam went OK. I got my new prescription. Once again, I can see more or less clearly as I type these words.

Joy of joy, the doctor informed me that I have just the slightest onset of cataracts in both eyes.

It's really nothing she said. Hardly even there. Barely noticeable.

But it partially explains how my vision is now markedly worse than it was just two years ago, especially in dim light.

Cataracts.

Huh.

This is the first, real incidence of an old man ailment that I've experienced, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

Ultimately, I know that they will need to be dealt with. Not in the next couple of years, but ultimately.

Of course, I know that ultimately, we all face a grimmer future than cataract surgery. As Keynes pointed out, in the long run, we're all dead.

But cataracts? I didn't see that coming. Not even with my new glasses.

Happy new year.


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