fear of prescription glasses

[wilkersk]

Go get your cataract surgery. Everybody eventually gets them. You'll be 20/20 after.

My last eye checkup, the doc said, "oh, you'll need cataract surgery eventually." I said, "can't wait!" My dad has worn coke-bottle glasses all his life. At 85, he had cataract surgery. He''s 20/25 in both eyes. Its weird seeing him without his glasses.

If your uncorrected eyesight is so poor, you could not land the plane reasonably safely without your glasses, I'd say put Croakies on your glasses, and carry a spare pair of glasses with you.

 

[LongRoadBob]

Another vote for "just carry a spare pair" even if it's the ones with your last prescription or whatever. I would need them to navigate and land safely.

I had one pair that had a lens pop out in "just walking along" (nowhere near an airplane). Why set yourself up for a freak occurence like that creating a difficult situation in the air, or endure any anxiety about the possibility when it's so easily avoided? And in perhaps more likely scenarios like someone sitting on them while you're eating your $100 burger, you have a spare pair to get home with.

This, for sure for me. It isn’t just having them fly out the window, in my experience you wear glasses and we don’t do a pre-flight check of our glasses...most often really I wear my glasses and think all is fine and either the stem breaks suddenly, or a lens pops out. Either one would make it very difficult to use. Also it happens suddenly, you don’t notice until they suddenly are useless.

Anyone wearing glasses for any length of time (unless their old glasses did exactly that, pop out of break) has the old prescription ones somewhere. Seems like a no brainer that you would put them in your flight bag as backup. Not perfect, but better than not being able to see. Notice too that expectation bias happens much easier when you can’t see well...setting instruments (if long sighted) and reading them... maybe even worse if you are short sighted.

 

[Brad W]

I no longer wear prescriptions...but I do need readers. Normally I 'hold' them on top of my head when not in use. Recently on my first knock the rust off flight, doing the preflight, they broke while I was leaning to look into the oil hatch on the cessna 172F..... and they fell right into the engine. Nothing but net!
Now these glasses have probably been on my head for several months...never a problem till that moment!
I'm glad I had a spare in my flight bag.....

 

[Kenny Phillips]

Of course, once your cataracts are fixed (for me, in the next couple of years) you'll still need either readers or glasses for distance (if you don't go monofocal/multifocal) as your eyes will no longer focus. They likely cannot focus anyway, at our age! I can't decide whether I want to stay how I am, with about 6" focus distance, or go distant with readers.

 

[kgruber]

Also.........with cataracts your color vision deteriorates. Since they do one at a time with a week in between, you'll see in real color in the new eye and black and white in the old.

 

[Matthew]

Also.........with cataracts your color vision deteriorates. Since they do one at a time with a week in between, you'll see in real color in the new eye and black and white in the old.

My dad’s experience was like so many other’s: why did I wait so long? and I can see colors again!

In his case seeing through his cataracts was like looking through a yellow filter.