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 08:27 am (UTC)Um. Last pair of new glasses I had, before these, were terrible and I couldn't wear them at all *but* the prescription sunglasses that were the same I could wear just fine, something about reduction in light helped. Or get new glasses made to your prescription minus a little bit, so they are stronger than what you have but not too strong?
Racking my brains here now because having had the same lenses for over ten years I've been revelling in being able to *see* again without fuzziness since I finally got my nice new ones...
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-13 09:42 am (UTC)Yes, I always pay the extra few dollars for both glare- and scratch-resistant coatings.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-13 10:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-13 10:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-13 10:36 am (UTC)