This is a follow-up to my earlier thread, “Progressives – Can these be made?” For my own reference, I’m going to write down my experience and reiterate my Rx and remake history, in case I ever wonder about those two months I had seven pairs of glasses made. The good news is that the 7th time is the charm, and the new glasses are great. Hopefully, some of the professionals here can extract a data point or two from all this. I’d again like to thank Robert, Texas Ranger, Lee, and everyone else who took what I said in that thread at face value and answered with constructive comments. It was useful talking to you.

This is going to be kinda long, so a quick summary is this. The first six pairs were all made to the same Rx, and the ones that didn’t suffer from flaws such as 10mm fitting cross misplacements or ripple defects were similar in the suboptimal vision they gave me. I could correct the left lens by rotating it clockwise from my perspective as the wearer, which I’m told moved it back toward the 2001 axis value, and at the computer, at least, I could improve the right lens either by looking through a spot 3mm temporal to the fitting cross or looking more through the intermediate area. These lenses, made by three different labs, were all Essilor Natural polycarbonate. The new glasses have a slightly different Rx, determined from scratch by a new OD, which is almost the same as my 2001 Rx. The new glasses use AO Pro 15 plastic lenses.

The pair that worked

After putting it off for a couple of days, I returned to Eyemasters Saturday to pick up the remakes. The optician had me try them on and verified the lens markings lined up, so she removed the markings, and I verified I could see distance OK. We had a brief but pleasant conversation, and she asked me to call her next week and let her know how they did once I got home, which was fine by me.

I got into my car, and I immediately noticed I could read the dashboard edge to edge, corner to corner, and it was nice and sharp with both eyes and each eye individually, with me looking at its center and just moving my eyes around. That was impossible with the six previous pairs, so my trepidation began to yield to optimism. Driving home, I found nothing wrong with the glasses, and I stopped at the supermarket before returning home. There, I found I could read labels on shelves at eye level from an ordinary distance without any trouble, which again was impossible with the six previous attempts.

Once home, I tried reading, and I found I have a very usable reading area, so that seems OK. I watched some TV, and the news crawl at the bottom of CNN looked clear; the “slanties” (diagonal ray distortion at character bottoms) were gone (this was previously observed through the left lens). So at this point, everything that was wrong before has become right, leaving just the computer monitor to check out. The dreaded computer monitor. Given the good experience so far, I’m thinking I’ll be very surprised if it’s still a problem, so I got up my gumption and slowly opened my eyes to it. Like the dashboard in my car, it was clear edge to edge, corner to corner, with me looking at its center and just moving my eyes around. Both eyes are equally clear, and the strange dead spot in the right lens is gone. In fact, I believe I’ll even be able to replace my 17” monitor with a 19” without sacrificing much clarity in the periphery.

So these glasses are pretty much a total win. Are they perfect? No, but what is? I do perceive some swim when turning my head, mainly in the right lens, which is significantly worse than with my previous SV pair (I guess the cylinder is the reason for it with the SV pair?), but I’m noticing it less and less. In addition, at monitor distance, 24-30”, my eyes are being asked to accommodate a little, and they have good days and bad days. While sitting with proper posture and looking at the top 1/3 of the screen, the lens aberration on either side of center actually improves the focus at this distance, and this is true for both eyes. So I can often see this part of the screen better when I turn my head left or right and look through the lens edges, and when I turn my head back to center, it can take my eyes a few moments to adjust. That’s adding up to some intermittent eyestrain, so I probably will look into computer glasses soon. I can’t fault the glasses for this, as I’m looking through the bottom of the distance part to view the top 1/3 of my monitor, and to fix this with the Rx, it would mess up the distance part for actual distance viewing.

The pairs that failed

Rx History

Dec-93: OD(+0.50, -4.25, 018), OS(-0.50, -3.75, 167), SV, OD 0
Jan-01: OD(+1.25, -4.50, 015), OS(+0.00, -3.75, 165), SV, OD 1
May-03: OD(+1.25, -4.25, 015), OS(+0.25, -4.00, 160), SV, OD 1, no glasses made
Jul-04: OD(+1.00, -4.25, 015), OS(+0.25, -3.75, 162), +1.25, OD 1, progs 1-2
Sep-04: OD(+1.00, -4.25, 015), OS(+0.25, -3.75, 162), +1.50, OD 1, progs 3-6
Oct-04: OD(+1.25, -4.50, 015), OS(+0.25, -3.75, 165), +1.25, OD 2, prog 7


Lens Types

Prog 1: unknown
Progs 2-6: Essilor Natural polycarbonate
Prog 7: AO Pro 15 CR-39

Sears

Sears made prog pairs 1-3. For pair 1, they gave me the wrong frame. I selected a Bulova frame, and over a week later, they presented me with an Oscar de la Renta frame with bare metal stems terminating in weird flared tips. I picked those up on a very busy Saturday and immediately felt something was wrong, besides having the tiniest sliver of reading area. I spent a solid 10 minutes looking around the store for the frames I actually selected, and while I didn’t see a single Bulova frame, I found the Oscars in brown. They had previously told me the frames I actually selected didn’t come in brown, so confused, I asked them to order the pair they gave me in brown; the manager happily agreed, since they “now had them in brown.” However, a couple of days later, I finally began to listen to myself, and I returned the glasses. When I told the manager they were the wrong frames, she gave me a line about “sometimes they have recalls”, and they’d be happy to let me select a different frame since the Bulovas “were no longer available.” So I did, and they made me a new pair. This pair also had a very small reading area and suffered from distortions similar to the ones I described in the earlier thread, so I went to OD1 for the first glasses check. Her assistant said the lensometry didn’t match the Rx, the seg height was too low, and the PDs were wrong, so after adjusting the frames for the very first time, OD1 wrote a new Rx (Sep-04) and specified the seg height and PDs. She also increased the add from +1.25 to +1.50, and when I asked if that was a good idea given the simultaneous seg height increase, she said it was due to the small frames. So I went along with this, and went back to Sears. After a few minutes of them denying they would have let me leave the store if anything had been wrong (I guess giving me the wrong frames doesn’t count, eh?), they agreed to redo the glasses. After another week of waiting, I picked up the glasses, and they were actually worse. I go back to OD1 for the second glasses check, and she finds the fitting cross is 10mm off temporally on the right lens. At this point, I was thoroughly disgusted and so returned the glasses for a refund. I also began researching progressive lenses at this time and found a copy of the Sola progressive identifier, fitting guides, etc.

Eyemasters 1

Eyemasters 1 made progs 4 and 5 and actively declined to adjust the frames before measuring me. The first pair had distortions similar to prog 2, and so I returned to OD1 for the third glasses check. Again, her assistant said she found problems with the lensometry (left lens axis of 154 vs prescribed 162, right lens off in sphere +0.50 diopters) and fit, and again, I described the adjustments I could make to see well (i.e. rotating the left lens and looking somewhat temporally through the right lens). This time, OD1 dialed the Sep-04 Rx into her trial glasses, and because I could read the eye chart with them, she said the Rx was right. So it’s back to Eyemasters 1 for a remake. That pair came back with horrible swirl marks, pitting, and a ripple defect in the upper right quadrant of the right lens, plus no improvement to the left lens. So I returned them for a refund.

Eyemasters 2

At Eyemasters 2, I spoke to an optician/technician who really seemed to know her stuff. She adjusted the glasses before marking them, a true first, though it should be considered standard operating procedure. She made them herself after ordering the tool she needed and said they came out perfect. But prog 6 had the same problems as progs 2 (Sears) and 4 (Eyemasters 1). With all these pairs, I found I could improve OS by rotating the lens back toward the 2001 axis value, and as for OD, there was a dead spot in the center of my vision which was improved either by looking through a spot 3mm temporal to the fitting cross or tilting my head back and looking more through the intermediate area. So, I went to the OD at that Eyemasters for a second opinion, and OD2 refracted me from scratch to almost exactly my 2001 Rx and prescribed a +1.25 add, down from OD1’s +1.50. She also suggested I try plastic lenses for their better optics. I went along with all of this, and instead of Essilor Natural polycarbonates, they used AO Pro 15 CR-39 lenses. Finally, after two months of this, and six previous attempts, prog 7 turned out fine.

Assessment

These AO Pro 15’s give me good vision with the new Rx, and the combination (prog 7) worked on the first try.

Given that both a different lens and Rx were used to make prog 7, it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions. I do think it’s clear that the OD1 Rx was flawed, because three labs made three pairs with similar distortions, and I find it hard to believe Essilor Naturals are so badly incompatible with my Rx. This, plus the nature of the adjustments I could make to improve the similar progs 2, 4, and 6, points the finger directly at the Rx, in my lay (though scientifically trained in other areas) opinion. OD1 should have considered the clinical feedback I gave her and revisited the Rx.

For progs 2, 4, and 6, Sears, Eyemasters 1, and Eyemasters 2 probably made them reasonably close to the flawed Rx. Maybe OD1’s lensometry was flawed, and that’s why they kept saying the glasses weren’t made right. For example, on her lensometry note, she recorded that prog 4 had an OS axis of 154, and frankly, I no longer believe this was accurate, as I wouldn’t have been able to see at that axis.

Plastic lenses are not too thick and heavy for my Rx, even for progressives. I was rather vigorously steered into polycarbonate around 10 years ago, when I decided to wear glasses again, having worn contacts for a little less than 10 years prior to that time. I was really out of touch with the world of glasses then and went along with everything that was suggested to me.

Plan

For the foreseeable future, I’ll stick with plastic lenses, as they are cheaper, not too thick and heavy, and have better optical properties (though I don’t know how significant this really is for me) than polycarbonate.

I’ll listen to myself earlier, especially when I’ve made detailed observations and formulated questions such as the ones I presented in my earlier thread here. In particular, I should have asked OD1 why the adjustments I could make to progs 2, 4, and 6 to see better through them weren’t leading her to revisit her Rx.

Pay a visit to Eyemasters 2 and thank the optician and OD there.