Many of you know my saga with the elderly person I care for (EPICF).
For those who don’t a quick recap is EPICF is a relative, not parent, chaotic all their life with poor executive functioning. Now has dementia. House is hoarded and finances in a mess. We have a difficult relationship as I struggle a bit with the shitshow they have created with for me to deal with and how utterly useless they were when I was being slammed by sequential bereavements.
I’ve got PoA and have been actively involved trying to untangle the chaos for 18 months. They are now in residential care.
There have been ongoing complaints about vision. They do have macular degeneration and have had a cataract done. Specsavers have sold them three sets of glasses in 2years, the prescription between last two sets looked only minimally different to me yet the new glasses still cost hundreds. It felt a bit exploitative. EPICF made this appointment without discussing with me.
Last glasses were made in Feb. But there have been ongoing complaints about vision since then and there are about a million sets of glasses in circulation. It has been hard to work out which pair do what.
I made an optician appt for this week when I would be in town (i live hundreds of miles away) to try to sort the mess out and so I could understand what was correctable given the macular degeneration and what isn’t so we can get out of they cycle of going to the optician all the time. I am SO glad I did.
Turns out EPICF should be wearing distance glasses all the time. They don’t and without them they can only read the top letter on the chart, this kind of explains why when we go out they never walk towards the door, or toilet, or other appropriate location in the venue.
The glasses they had identified as their distance glasses were actually the Feb 2025 reading glasses, this probably explains why they don’t help distant vision much!
The reading glasses that have been much complained about were actually a prescription from 2 years ago.
So we have ordered new distance and new reading glasses with updated prescriptions. Distance version remains a bit crap. (Mid way down the chart) but with the new reading glasses prescription she could read the smallest line on the near vision chart. The new reading glasses will hopefully revolutionise life when they arrive as tablet usage and reading has really dropped off.
I chose two sets of frames that look completely different to help care home staff quickly identify if the correct glasses are in use and I’m going to put a notice up in her room and possibly on the wheeled walker asking the staff to help get the right glasses on for the right tasks.
I’ve done this as my grandfather used to struggle with mixing up/not wearing his hearing aids. Finally in desperation I got the audiologists to make him paediatric style coloured ones using the standard audiological colour convention Red = right and bLue = left. It made it much easier for family and carers and significantly helped communication!!