weird brain wiring
May. 13th, 2003 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioMy 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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-13 07:43 am (UTC)My current pair has those - my eyes aren't especially bad and haven't changed since college, but I got a pair with what looks like just a frame on top (actually, there is a plastic cord at the the bottom, but that's effectively invisible) and those work better with thinner lenses.
It took me three days to adjust to them. I got dizzy every time I stood up, and walking across the room was weird - the ground was too far down. It didn't help that the weather was icy so my footing was even less sure or that I have lousy balance in the best of times. It probably did help that I wasn't driving anywhere.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-13 09:40 am (UTC)I don't know. I'll have to ask. My lenses are plastic, not glass, which I gather is inherently more problematic. But glass would weigh way too much.
I did try the "ulta-thin" plastic once, but it introduced a lot of distortion and I sent them back.