A Blurry Life

Last Wednesday I finally got up the nerve (and money) and walked into a local optometrist office and asked if they could give me an exam for contact lenses.

Reader's digest history:

* I was born with 20/400 vision, hated glasses as a kid (ugly, inconvenient, made me dizzy)
* Got contacts in high school when soft contacts became readily available
* By my mid-twenties could barely wear them anymore due to allergies and dry eyes (they kept sticking to my eyes!) so I had the old-fashioned RK surgery
* It gave me bad night vision and weakened by close-up vision but it worked OK till my late 30's
* Then my close-up vision got steadily worse till I had to start wearing reading glasses, which didn't work well and made me dizzy
* Then my distance vision started getting fuzzy and I developed double vision in my right eye
* My stupid opthalmologist basically told me between my MS and the RK side effects I'd never see well so I should just wear cheapie reading glasses and suffer
* I went to an different optometrist who managed to give me a set of halfway decent presciptions for distance and reading glasses, which took forever to get used to and helped a little
* I still hate wearing glasses - they still make me dizzy, I'm tormented by glare because of the RK scars, and I feel like I'm looking at the world between bars or out of a tiny window, they actually made me really irritable and gave me panic attacks

So I finally decided what the hell, Halloween was in a few days, I would be wearing a ton of eye makeup, and contacts had to be better than glasses, even if I couldn't get near 20/20. And I know I could never handle bifocal glasses, my depth perception is non-existant with regular glasses.

So I plunked down my $260 and have been experimenting with different combinations of contact lenses. I had read that I would probably need RGP contacts (mega expensive) but the doctor has been trying B&L Multifocal soft contact lenses instead. Bifocal contacts? Wow, who'd of thunk it...

My only problem has been balancing the driving and walking around part of my world with the reading books and staring at a computer all night part. He tried making my right eye do distance and my left eye do reading, but my right eye wouldn't allow the left eye to be stronger without giving me a piercing headache. So he changed them up and gave me a third contact for my right eye to try and use for closeup work. Still giving me headaches, though, I think it's too strong. I'm trying not to be a pesky patient but I don't think I can handle using it till my next Wednesday appointment, I'm probably going to go in and bug them this weekend and see if I can get a somewhat less intense reading lense, the variation between the two is just not working.

The non-reading set is actually pretty good, though. It's wonderful to be able to drive around with my normal sunglasses, walk through stores and look at price tags without having to pull out my reading glasses, and just not feel like I'm looking at the world through a fricking window. And not to have to contantly worry about getting smudges on my glasses. My cat loves it, she can get right in my face without bumping into a piece of metal.

I know it supposed to take several weeks at the minimum to adjust to multifocal contacts, and I'm trying to be patient and let my brain adjust. The worst part so far, though, is when I take them out, my vision is severely blurred for several hours afterwards. Like my eyes have been dilated. I can't even see with my reading glasses on. Apparently my cornea was so messed up by the RK surgery that it's easily distorted even by soft contacts. So no more reading in bed for me (sigh). I hope that side effect fades over time, but I've got a bad feeling it won't.

But I keep telling myself... it's better than glasses. And I understand in the UK they've almost got the whole corneal lens implant thing perfected.

Posted by Morticia at November 04, 2005 04:30 AM | TrackBack