Year's End is a time to look back and forward...

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Does that mean they are only available by use of a formal prescription ?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

My eye problems were:
Glasses , since first grade and bifocals since I was 35.
Any changes were very slow btween age19 to 65 then the following.

I did not get the bifocals; just got thicker and thicker lenses....

Detached retina, fixed with laser surgery.

Mine was repaired by surgery with overnight in the hospital and about 3 months recovery

Cataracts, fixed by lens replacement operations. It actually only took minutes per eye. No hospital time.

Had both eyes done this year; necessary as they could not correct with lenses in glasses anymore - eventually cataracts obstruct vision and that's that. Went from being terribly near sighted to being slightly far sighted with the replacement lenses so I use reading glasses now. Again, eye surgery clinic out patient surgery.....and I am a terrible patient with anything related to my eyes. Doc though I was joking but found out how terrible I was with 1st one; 2nd one they doubled the anesthesia.......I was still terrible.

[rogruth]

Does that mean they are only available by use of a formal prescription ?

No. Only that the advice of an eye doctor may be needed.
Often a druggist can tell you what to use. I understand that a plain vitamin supplement will work if it is not in an advanced stage.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Roger, which vitamins help with macular degeneration?

A little light reading might be useful: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4058353/

Also, might inquire about the use of daclizumab which at one time was being used to treat ADM.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Thank you, both. I will pursue this information for my wife.
Murph

[John Webster]

I have been extremely nearsighted all my life and was wearing trifocals by the time I was fifty. By a year ago last September my cataracts had gotten so bad that I couldn't read freeway signs. I had lens replacement surgery on my right eye. Then Fuch's dystrophy made that eye unusable most of the time. So I had a tissue transplant to fix that. That produced a couple of "floaters" that made the eye useless. After being told repeatedly to wait for them to go away I had a victreoectomy (oil change) which left me with an intermittent gray spot.

During this time I could not work and driving, reading and using a computer were difficult, sometimes impossible. The cataract in my left eye continued to worsen.

Last September I had lens replacement surgery on the left eye which went well and got new trifocals. My distance vision is pretty good except for the intermittent gray spot and occasional blurriness in the right eye.

I went back to work in November (I design electrical connectors using Solidworks 3D CAD).

Because of my nearsightedness the new lenses leave everything within about eight feet very blurry. The trifocals give me two ranges of near vision each with a depth of about three inches at eight inches and eighteen inches. I had intended to be retired by now (I am 70) and working on my large stash of models. I haven't tried serious modelling yet but doing repairs on a couple of engines has proved much more difficult than it used to be because of my limited near vision.