Presbyopia & Contact Lenses

I say this almost every day but I don't know if I've ever blogged about it: people who see *awesome* far away are just not great contact lens candidates (nor are they LASIK candidates for that matter, but that's another topic). These emmetropes (no Rx) and low-hyperopes (functionally no Rx) are accustomed to seeing *INCREDIBLE* far away, and every...yes EVERY contact lens option for reading after age 40 is a sacrifice in vision for them. Monovision makes one eye VERY blurry far away, which they have never had before. They've always seen awesome far away out of both eyes all the time. Multifocal contacts make BOTH eyes a little blurry far away. Well they don't like that, either because once again, they're accustomed to seeing awesome all the time. Yes, contacts are made for emmetropic (prescriptionless) presbyopes, but relatively few of them wear them. Very high failure rate. Why? Because at the end of the day most of them are unwilling to sacrifice any distance vision acuity. Even when you warn them beforehand and they say they understand and they'll do "anything" to not have to wear reading glasses, most of them still complain too much about the blur they get in monovision and multifocals. They always want it "just a little clearer". It's not their fault, really. Most of them have never known blur. They don't *really* understand what it's like to be "very blurry". They think any sacrifice in acuity is "VERY" blurry. 20/25 is "very blurry" to many of them. And they've never had to tolerate any blur at all and a lot of them just cannot do it. Ok no biggie...easily solved with glasses. Rarely is there a case we can't make see *awesome* out of glasses. Just not contacts. Really the problem here is that contact lenses were not originally designed for people who see awesome. Obviously they were originally designed for people who see POORLY.