Dear Rich,

Subject: Think for yourself.

To expand a bit further, when I say "think for yourself,"
I DO MEAN that you should ignore scientifically
verifiable human evidence, commonly-accepted
beliefs, and standards of practice from evidence-based
medicine.

I DO MEAN that you should ignore ALL of those "majority
opinion" trappings and instead pay attention to the widom
found here:

www.chinamybunghole.com

You will find many on sci.med.vision who disagree with me, but
perhaps NONE as adamantly as my niece who
listened to me and became highly myopic nonetheless.

Best,

Odis
Avuncular, but Insane

To all that responded to my original question, I thank you. To the
optometrists on the board, I did just visit one & had my eyes examined.
My question was just a technical question & replies from both
professionals & "buffs"(for want of a better term) were helpful. The
reason I asked was that I had been prescribed progressive lenses with
the aforementioned prescription after stating that I spend all day on a
computer at work, not to mention a couple of hours at home. I currently
had a prescription pair of glasses from another optometrists 4 years
old(unknown diopter powers & I had forgotten them at work before my
appointment with the new optometrists). I had told the former
optometrist(from another state) that I primarily need them for computer
use. He prescribed a bi-focal with an intermediate power on top for the
screen & lower for reading. To this day, the prescription is perfect for
my needs. The single power intermediate is not quite strong enough for
me to read paper documents, so I need the bi-focal. I can get by with a
single lower power reading glass(which I did when these frames broke)but
prefer a stronger bi-focal. The problem is that the new optometrist told
me progressives were just what I needed for computer use, to read with &
to correct the slight fuzziness I have at distance. No sooner did I sit
down in front of a computer when I realized that they were functionally
useless for me at work. I am a mail service pharmacists who sits at dual
17" LCD monitors with an image of a prescription on the left screen &
various data on the right(patient profile, what the tech entered for the
prescription, etc.). This requires constant checking back & forth with
some speed for efficiency) to make sure the data-entry matches the
prescription. With the older bi-focals all I needed to do was move my
eyes back & forth. The progressives had such a narrow intermediate field
that it not only took constant head movements to acquire sharpness but
it also slowed me down to the point of uselessness. I usually ended up
just tilting my head all the way back to read the screen through the
near area & not the intermediate. However, after research, I discovered
that only near vision progressives are appropriate for use on a computer
& I liked the progressive for walking around, so I went back & changed
them to transitions(I live in Arizona, very sunny)& decided to order a
new 2nd pair of inexpensive computer-use bi-focal on-line to replace my
old one(frames 10 years old, lenses 4 years old, scratched with a slight
crack from trying to pop them back into a slightly bent frame). Hence,
my questions about how to order the "add" value. I'm just surprised that
the computer screen appears clear at 26" through the 2.5 diopter lowest
part of the progressives. I suppose I should take them to another shop
to confirm the correctness of the new prescription & obtain the powers
of my old bi-focals.
I welcome any insights on my saga & any flames for posting a needlessly
unsolicited long post.

Thanks again,

Rich