Anyone an optician or knowledgeable about ths stuff - varifocals, astigmatism, contacts

[Branleuse]

Ive recently had to get varifocals glasses and have been told I have astigmatism. Usually I wear contacts, and have been wearing a lower prescription single vision normal contact lenses, but ive got a higher prescription now. The contact lens appointment has meant I now have contacts for astigmatism, but they dont do varifocal lenses for astigmatism. I now cant see a bloody thing close up in my contact lenses. I dont see why, when with my previous lenses it wasnt this bad.
I dont want to wear glasses all the time, and i dont really want to have to take reading glasses with me everywhere either when i never needed them with my old lenses.

wouldnt it be more important to have contacts with varifocal than correct the astigmatism if I have to choose one over the other. Why would they have only really noticed the astigmatism now.

I will try and speak to optician again next week, but im a bit stressed by it. My new lenses, are physically more comfortable, but i am quite stressed by needing to blink to focus (as if youve just gone out in the sun) and needing reading glasses even to read labels in shops all of a sudden, and its not as if the reading glasses are giving me comfortable vision particularly either.

distance vision is definitely much better in new glasses and contacts by the way, and the varifocal glasses are good, but I just dont like having to wear glasses full time

I had an astigmatism diagnosed quite a few years ago and my near sight has recently been deteriorating with age (late 40s).

I tried Multivision lenses (the optician described them as circles/dots of different prescriptions within the lenses.
I couldn't see anything (near/far/mid) clearly with them and felt totally disoriented.

I then tried monovision, which is one lense of your normal distance prescription (dominant eye) and one lesser.
These work really well for me.

My distance prescription is -1.5 in each eye and I use a -0.75 in my non-dominant eye.

My optician (Specsavers) worked with me for several months over last year to find a solution I was happy with.

Thanks for replying @Chasingsquirrels Im not sure how that would work for me as my prescription is so much higher, so around the -5 mark

My mum has had the monovision for about 20 years (which is how I knew about it), her prescription is much higher, -6 at least.

I’m much the same. I can’t read anything close up when wearing my contacts so I do use reading glasses on top of the contacts. It’s annoying as my close up vision without contacts in is pretty good still.

I have monovision lenses at -9 and -9.5, the -9 is a toric lens for astigmatism. Works brilliantly for me, been wearing them for 10+ years. My optician tweaks the prescription every now and then. I don't use reading glasses at all but use the magnifying glass function on my phone occasionally for reading ingredient labels or similar.

the optician said previously that i should consider getting reading glasses at a low prescription, but even +1 feels weird. i found some +0.75 online which were a bit better, but it just feels horrid after years of just being able to wear contacts, to be putting on extra glasses on top and even then it feeling not quite right.

Completely understand that, I've had lenses since I was 13.
Mine went in lockdown last year and as I was working at home (and couldn't read the pc monitor with me lenses in) I just stopped wearing them and used my glasses when I needed to see distance - which as I wasn't going out much wasn't very often. It felt pointless to me wearing lenses only to have to wear reading glasses as well.

Really is worth persevering with your optician to find something which works for you. It really was trial and error for me to get the right combination - middle distance (tv) was the hardest to sort.

My only problem now is if I'm reading something on my phone or kindle then pick up a drink with my right hand (as I've done all my life) I then obscure my right eye (reading eye) when I lift the glass to drink - and the screen is then blurry.

Not an optician but in same position. Yes unfortunately you need to carry reading glasses. Your prescription tells you what reading strength you need. If you're e.g. -2.5 each eye you can buy off the shelf. If you're e.g. -2.75 left and -.1 right You can get different strengths on each eye with more expensive made to order readers. If you have a difference maybe that's why the ones you've tried feel "off"?

I didnt manage to get used to it at all, and have pretty much gone back to glasses, and will just keep contacts for very occasional use

I have a very high prescription (-13/14). I used contact lenses for social use and carried reading glasses. Day to day I wore varifocals. I've now had refractive lens exchange surgery. Concentrated on distance vision and astigmatism so will need reading glasses. Results from first surgery are excellent. Second surgery in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed it goes as well as the first.

I do the monovision thing too, although I actually only wear one lens in my dominant eye, and nothing in the other.
I have varifocal glasses with a reading prescription of +2.0 but I can still see sufficiently well to read with no glasses at all.
Ask about monovision, it takes a bit of getting used to but I've found it worth it.