cataracts

[bloke]

I'm still managing to work and guess well (context clues, etc.) when reading music (and - today - all I had to do was to play songs...no sheet music) but - at first - I thought she was a Muppet...

[bort2.0]

Prison?

[Tubajug]

Wal-Mart is my guess!

[York-aholic]

Wal-Mart is my guess!

That’s what I was going to say.

Bloke, go get the cataracts surgery.

[the elephant]

Yeah, I saw that one on Facebook, too. Hilarious!

[bloke]

@York-aholic

I can see (up close) remarkably well in my LEFT eye - up close.
My RIGHT eye (up close) sees double (c. 1/8" displacement).
I can recognize signs/lights/vehicles hundreds (a thousand?) feet away, and possibly (...?? considering there are some people with REALLY bad vision) better than SOME people WITH corrective lenses.

My cataracts might (??) not be that bad (though I know they exist), and some new specs (as I quit wearing ANY, a few years ago) might help quite a bit.

I drove to Wisconsin (last summer) partially at night, didn't miss turns, and (mostly) relied on memory and (prior to leaving home) looking at paper maps...so I had to be able to see signs (etc.) No one riding with me cautioned me about my driving (TWO - count 'em - TWO older women) during the entire trip (and I drove the entire trip, both ways). I can recognize cop cars (both wrapper and no wrapper), which is important.

Reading sheet music has begun to suck, but most stuff I read is the S.O.S. (because I'm old). I recently sightread the 4th 'bone book at a big-band concert (not art nouveau charts, but also not "stupid easy")...and yes, I actually sight-read (no emailed PDF's). The thing I screwed up were where some downbeat quarter rests were written ABOVE (wtf?) the staff...but after a couple of those (two beats/bar), I caught the rest of them.

In summary, I'M GETTING BY, and I LIKE to STILL have the ability for my OWN eyes to be able to focus up-close and at a distance.
The welfare state sent me some credit card thingie, whereby I can get free eye exams/specs/etc. (just as they would give me free eye surgery (via money printing, infinite borrowing, etc...all the stuff that they've always done). I just would rather plant the garden, fix horns, practice, and hand out at blokeplace, rather than drive into Memphis to pick up some glasses (which would likely improve things)...but then: I'd have to WEAR the damn things.

The "cataracts" thing was (as Wade pointed out) just a vehicle to transplant a current facebook meme/joke to tubaforum.

[York-aholic]

I thought that picture was so funny that I wanted to show it to my 2nd grade class, until I realized that they don't know what "Muppets" are.

[cjk]

@bloke You might consider getting some drug store readers.

I have reading glasses for up close. I'm not so sure that was a good decision. I think I could have gotten by with a set of readers. They would have been much cheaper.

My brother-in-law had cataracts in his 50s. He had worn thick glasses his entire life. He had cataract surgery where they replaced his lenses (?). He no longer needs glasses.

He thought the world got a lot bigger since his range of clear vision is now greater than it ever had been in his life previously.

[bloke]

I've been using off-the-shelf magnifiers...

...but since my right eye is now so funky, I might actually need to find two matching pair (different strengths) and mix the lenses.

That having been said, I'm not expecting magnifiers to fix the right-eye/up-close double vision (which doesn't - if being really critical - absolutely disappear until I'm c. 6-feet back).

LOL...I can fix SCHOOL horns with out magnifiers, but not Y'ALL's horns.

[arpthark]

ref: YBB-321s, as long as you can tell a D from an O shape, you should be good.

[bloke]

ref: YBB-321s, as long as you can tell a D from an O shape, you should be good.

...There's always Bondo...

[Mary Ann]

Well sorry for the wet blanket, but if you do decide to do cataract surgery, do just one eye to start with, because I know people who get wet macular degeneration after cataract surgery, and if you then do the other eye knowing that happened to the first eye, because your doctor says it has nothing to do with it, you could end up blind like my mother did. Just ran into a fellow horn player who had the same thing happen, and is now blind in one eye trying to read music with the other.

[windshieldbug]

but since my right eye is now so funky, I might actually need to find two matching pair (different strengths) and mix the lenses.

You can get lenses that focus at music length. Just ask the optician.
Side benefit (or not) - they make the conductor out of focus…

Made life easier for many years!