I’ve needed glasses for as long as I can remember. I think I might’ve been 5 or 6 when I actually got them, but I honestly do not remember a time in my life where I opened my eyes and saw perfectly clear. Struggling with myopia my entire life is my cross to bear.
I have Restriction B marked on my drivers license (corrective lenses). When my Mom filled out my forms for camp when I was a kid, in the line under Handicapp she would write in big letters, MUST WEAR GLASSES.
I suffered through the teasing. I’ve been called all those real unoriginal names; coke-bottles, four-eyes, etc. I mean, LOOK at that picture. The glasses took up the majority of my face! I was a target.
My Mom must have spent thousands of dollars on glasses. My prescription changed so often when I was growing up. I had new glasses every year, if not more often than that. I had bifocals, trifocals, regular glasses with reading glasses. I had them all. And none of them were very pretty. Back then, glasses weren’t made to fit small faces. I was forced to look awkward. And I needed to wear them at all times. I needed them the second I woke up, the second I got out of the shower or the pool or the ocean or the lake, I wore them to play softball, during PE, while snow-skiing**. I learned to water ski without ever being able to see the boat that was towing me. Lucky for me, the back of our boat was painted red. THAT much I could see. However, Santa Claus himself could have been driving and I would not have known the difference.
In pictures, if I remembered, I’d always take my glasses off. There’s only one or two class photos that show me wearing my glasses and not one in the individual poses. Even today I’m always conscious that I’m wearing my glasses when someone takes out the camera and if I decide I care at that moment, I’ll whip my glasses off my face.
I begged for contact lenses for years before my mother gave in and got them for me. I was in middle school. I believe it was seventh grade. My eyes were so bad (astigmatism) that the doctors felt that I wasn’t a candidate for soft lenses and I was prescribed Gas Permeable hard lenses. I was so excited to not have to wear glasses, but man. These contacts HURT. I could only wear them for a few hours a day. After about a year, they hurt too bad and I just went back to wearing glasses.
I had to go to therapy for my eyes. I wasn’t exactly clear back then on why I was going, but I know that I was put into a room at the optometrists office that had various different stations. At the stations there were marbles in bowls or pictures of road signs. I would have to look through a lens that would make me see double and then I’d have to force my eyes to bring the two objects I saw together into one.
Eventually I got soft-lenses. I was a much happier kid. I wore them ALL the time. I wore them while playing sports, water skiing, swimming. It made a marked improvement in my life. I’ve been wearing soft lenses every since and eventually technology developed something called Toric lenses which are weighted at the bottom. This helps with the astigmatism by holding the lens in place so it’s doesn’t float around all willy nilly (like non-toric lenses do).
In recent years when my eyes tire I get horrible headaches, have to squint to see things clearly, and my eyes itch and water. Today when I saw my optometrist (who’s also my fabulous FIL) he determined that I need something called prism. Come to find out, prism is the reason I was doing eye therapy all those years ago. My eyes have to work to make things line up. It’s not so much double-vision (well it kind of is, but just for a mili-second) as it is that things just look misaligned. This is the reason I squint at documents on my laptop or struggle to see items on the bottom shelf at the grocery store or high in the cupboards in the kitchen. When my eyes change height quickly, especially when they’re tired, they have to work extra hard to bring whatever I’m looking at into focus.
He’s able to put the prism in my prescription glasses, but you can’t put prism in contact lenses. The plan is to make me a pair of glasses that contain just the prism and no power. I’ll need to wear them over my contacts so that my eyes don’t have to work so hard.
I’m back to wearing glasses.
The good news is that I won’t need to wear them CONSTANTLY. I can see distance fine as along as I’m wearing my contacts or my regular glasses. And looking straight ahead doesn’t bother me. I won’t need to wear them to drive. But we decided it’s a good idea to wear them while working so that my eyes don’t have to work so hard and I won’t be so tired or have a headache at the end of the day.
The other good news is that we picked out a cute frame that I really like AND since the lenses will only have the prism in them, they won’t be a foot thick like my regular glasses. All in all, it really could be worse.
And another positive? As HORRIBLE as my eyes are and as expensive as it has been to correct my vision? I happen to have perfect teeth. I never had braces and I only have one cavity – which I got when I was 26 years old. My dentist sighs each time he sees me and says, “People pay for teeth this straight.” So there’s that.
Neener.
*In college someone asked me how bad my eyes were. My best friend at the time answered before I could. I think she said something like, “Oh she can’t see at all. She’s blind as a bizz-at.” It is now my routine answer for any time anyone asks exactly how bad my vision is.
**OMG. Snow skiing. Fitting my ski goggles OVER my glasses was a nightmare. And then if I started sweating and everything got foggy and then I would cry which made everything fog up even more and then I really couldn’t see and then I would panic. HOLY SHIT I was a disaster.
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