weird brain wiring

[cellio]

My current pair of glasses is starting to get pretty banged up (I'm hard on glasses), so I should get a new pair. But I've had bad luck with glasses. The last two times I've gotten new glasses, first getting a new prescription from a competent opthamologist, I haven't been able to adjust to the new lenses. In the first of those cases I then got them to duplicate my old pair. That's the pair I'm wearing now. In the second case, I just gave up -- I was trying at all because I was about to leave a job where the health plan would pay for a pair of glasses, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Now maybe I've just had some bad luck, with the glasses not exactly matching the prescriptions or something. But I don't think so; I've had the glasses independently checked, and they seem to be right. The problem must be in my brain.

I didn't always have trouble adjusting to new glasses; I mean, yes, there's the usual "this is a little weird" state, but it was unusual for it to last more than a couple hours. After wearing each of those last two pairs for a day I was dizzy, had headaches, and couldn't read (paper or monitor) without a great deal of difficulty. Last night I tried the last pair (I still have them) and was immediately disoriented. The experiment didn't last ten minutes.

I know that the problem is made worse by the fact that my lenses are large. This makes the lenses thick, and the curvature amplifies funky optical effects -- or so I've been told; I was bad at optics in college. But my eyes are weak enough that I don't want to give up the field of vision; I need to maximize lens coverage because without lenses I'm 20/200 or worse. So, large thick lenses.

For all practical purposes, contact lenses don't work. First, I would need to suplement them with glasses anyway (I spent a year doing that), because contacts can't correct astigmatism (nor can they supply bifocals, though I've heard someone's working on that). Second, the only kind of contact lenses I can wear (due to glaucoma) are daily-wear soft lenses, meaning I have to fuss with them nightly instead of weekly. Finally, when I tried the experiment (about ten years ago), I found that my eyes produce enough "gunk" that I had to take the lenses out and rinse them off (and flush out my eyes) around dinnertime anyway, else it impeded my vision too much.

So now I need a new pair of glasses, and I think I'm just going to have them duplicate what I'm wearing now. It's frustrating that, in theory, a better pair of glasses might be out there waiting for me, but I just don't know how to get there.

Comments

[amergina.livejournal.com]

contacts can't correct astigmatism (nor can they supply bifocals, though I've heard someone's working on that).

Actually, gas permeable contact lenses can do both. I have pretty bad astigmatism in one eye. But they have the same problem as daily soft lenses, with the added bonus of being hard. Many people can't deal with hard lenses... and yes, they feel really uncomfortable for the first week or two while your eye adjusts to having a hard piece of plastic floating on it.

I have always hated my glasses until I bought my most recent pair. Now I wear them more than my contacts, since I can actually see well out of them. I think it's because I have a fantastic eye doctor and finally got a decent exam and prescription. I also have glasses with little lenses, and I've found that they're not that bad. I was afraid that I'd loose some of my field of vision, but they sit close enough to my face to give me a decent field.

They're light and comfortable.

I can give you the name of my eye doctor, but he's in Allison Park, which may be a bit of a hike for you.

[victoriapringle.livejournal.com]

But they have the same problem as daily soft lenses, with the added bonus of being hard.

I don't know about the bifocals but I got soft contacts for astigmatism. This was 3 years ago so I'm sure that they have improved on them since then.

[amergina.livejournal.com]

I think softs can now correct slight astigmatism...

Unfortunately, I have pretty severe astigmatism in one eye. As of 6 months ago, soft lenses couldn't correct that.

[geekosaur]

Slight to moderate astigmatism can be corrected by contacts. And yes, there are both bifocal and trifocal soft lenses.

There are also soft gas-permeable lenses these days. I was under the impression they were pretty new and not commonly available as yet.

[cellio]

Thanks for the correction. According to my doctor I can't wear hard lenses, so I may have over-generalized her statement that contacts couldn't help my astigmatism. Presumably other contacts could, but not ones I can wear. Oops.