Lasik

[expat]

As you get older (i.e. past 40), you get longer sighted.

If you are short sighted, you can do without reading glasses just by taking off your distance glasses.

Magic.

Yeah, virtually everybody loses close-focus as they get older than 40. If you were short-sighted to begin with, i.e. can't focus on distance, then you still can't. Hence bifocals, sign of age.

You may still be able to read with your distance glasses off (but no longer with them on, because your focus range is now too small), but the monitor may be too far for the naked eye and too near for the distance glasses.

You need to decide what to do about that as you get older.
- If you wear glasses, you don't have to decide until it happens. Then you can either have several pairs, or bifocals or graduated lenses.
- If you wear contact lenses, you don't have to decide until it happens. Then you can do "monovision" (1 for near and 1 for far), or toric (which are supposed to let you see at all distances), or wear lenses and sometimes use glasses too.
- If you're going to get surgery, you should probably decide in advance, what you want to do about that question. Having surgery won't stop age-related presbyopia from happening.

[hyperD]

I noticed that I couldn't read something close up the other day - my wife gave me a tin of food to read (obviously a book would have been too normal) and I just couldn't focus up close. I seem to be suffering from the onset of presbyopia.

http://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/presbyopia.htm

[zeitghost]

I was about 43 when I started noticing that my arms were too short with my distance glasses on...

Now they're too short with my reading glasses on.

Ho hum.