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On glasses, contacts and eyesight
Jan. 26th, 2012 10:59 pmSo, I have been sitting on something for a little while that really isn't earthshattering but is really important to me.
I'm getting contact lenses.
I've had to wear glasses since I was eight years old and my eyesight without them is really bad (as in, my finger is blurry when held six inches in front of my nose). One of my recurring fantasies is being able to just open my eyes and see. Before anybody suggests Lasik, I get keloid scarring - that is, every cut/sore/wound I get heals into thick red scars, even the smallest scratch. (I once had a cyst in the middle of my forehead, and my parents found a plastic surgeon who specialised in leaving no scars to cut it out. There is now a pale but visible scar in the middle of my forehead.) I am very sure that if I got Lasik, it would scar, and while I have really bad myopia now, at least I don't have blind spots.
I have had contact lenses before - I got them in the last year of high school, when my optometrist said my eyesight had stabilised. In those days the only types available were 'hard', which were rigid polymer, stayed in the eye for up to a week at a time, and tended to be used for things like astigmatism, and 'soft', which were a bit more pliable and got put in of a morning and taken out each night, and were for things like my myopia. I stopped wearing contacts when I went to uni, because cleansing solutions and sterilization tablets cost fifty dollars for a month's supply, and these were the days when a weekly grocery bill for a single person was between twenty and thirty dollars (ten to fifteen if she was deliberately economising). A pair of glasses was no ongoing cost and covered by my parents' health insurance so it was a much more economical option.
But now I can afford contact lenses so I asked my optometrist about them. He didn't even offer me a permanent pair - the discussion went straight to disposable lenses. So strange! Twelve years ago, when I last had contacts, disposables were just coming on to the market and they were prohibitively expensive. Now, apparently, permanent contacts are being phased out and disposables are what's offered. I'm not unhappy, as it's no more cleansers and sterilizers and what-have-you, but it's really odd to realise that just ten years has seen this jump in technology and culture.
For the past week I've been trialling the lenses, and now I have a problem I never anticipated. The lenses go in like a dream but they really don't like coming out! It always takes me at least three goes to get them out. My new nightmare is presenting at the Emergency Room at 10:00pm one night, and shamefacedly explaining to the nurse there that I'm really sorry, but I just can't get my contacts out...
I'm getting contact lenses.
I've had to wear glasses since I was eight years old and my eyesight without them is really bad (as in, my finger is blurry when held six inches in front of my nose). One of my recurring fantasies is being able to just open my eyes and see. Before anybody suggests Lasik, I get keloid scarring - that is, every cut/sore/wound I get heals into thick red scars, even the smallest scratch. (I once had a cyst in the middle of my forehead, and my parents found a plastic surgeon who specialised in leaving no scars to cut it out. There is now a pale but visible scar in the middle of my forehead.) I am very sure that if I got Lasik, it would scar, and while I have really bad myopia now, at least I don't have blind spots.
I have had contact lenses before - I got them in the last year of high school, when my optometrist said my eyesight had stabilised. In those days the only types available were 'hard', which were rigid polymer, stayed in the eye for up to a week at a time, and tended to be used for things like astigmatism, and 'soft', which were a bit more pliable and got put in of a morning and taken out each night, and were for things like my myopia. I stopped wearing contacts when I went to uni, because cleansing solutions and sterilization tablets cost fifty dollars for a month's supply, and these were the days when a weekly grocery bill for a single person was between twenty and thirty dollars (ten to fifteen if she was deliberately economising). A pair of glasses was no ongoing cost and covered by my parents' health insurance so it was a much more economical option.
But now I can afford contact lenses so I asked my optometrist about them. He didn't even offer me a permanent pair - the discussion went straight to disposable lenses. So strange! Twelve years ago, when I last had contacts, disposables were just coming on to the market and they were prohibitively expensive. Now, apparently, permanent contacts are being phased out and disposables are what's offered. I'm not unhappy, as it's no more cleansers and sterilizers and what-have-you, but it's really odd to realise that just ten years has seen this jump in technology and culture.
For the past week I've been trialling the lenses, and now I have a problem I never anticipated. The lenses go in like a dream but they really don't like coming out! It always takes me at least three goes to get them out. My new nightmare is presenting at the Emergency Room at 10:00pm one night, and shamefacedly explaining to the nurse there that I'm really sorry, but I just can't get my contacts out...
