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.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Could you be getting higly refractive lenses?

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.

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

I took a few days to adapt to my most recent pair. The worst was actually Pump It Up for several days, especially on "bouncier" songs - most of the adaptation came pretty quickly, but the combination of new lenses and rapidly and rhythmically changing the angle from which I was viewing the screen (which has a bit of a strobe to begin with) gave me serious headaches after a few dances. I was this close to going back to the doctor when they settled in.

I noticed several years ago when I got the same prescription in very differently shaped lenses (one regular pair, one sunglasses with larger lenses) that I wound up never used the sunglasses because I had cross-adapation problems between the two pairs that were too strong to just trade back and forth every few hours.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

If you pay more you can get the extra thin glass in the lenses... also are you getting the anti-reflective coating, that helps sometimes.
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...

[alice-curiouser.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend LASIK if your insurance covers it or if you have the money in savings. I wore thick glasses since I was about nine, and it is SO cool to NOT have to wear them.

[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.

[kayre]

The one time I had serious trouble adapting to a new pair of glasses, it turned out that while the prescription was fine, the focal center of the lense was in the wrong place. From your pics, it looks like you, like me, might have close-set eyes, making this a real possibility. Ask them to take all the physical measurements for your glasses twice; and if you still have trouble, try moving the lenses to see if they 'feel' right if you push them down your nose, lift them extra high, turn your head to one side, something like that.... report results to the opticians, and ask them to remake the lenses correctly.

[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.

[cellio]

Could you be getting higly refractive lenses?

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.

[cellio]

I tried the ultra-thin lenses once but they made things worse, not better. Go figure.

Yes, I always pay the extra few dollars for both glare- and scratch-resistant coatings.

[cellio]

That's a different vision problem, unfortunately. Mine is that I don't have any lenses in my eyes (congenital cataracts). And they can't insert implants now, because my eyes grew up without them being there and the internals aren't laid out quite right now. Or something like that; my doctor says to ask every few years and eventually they might have a solution to this. But I'm in no hurry to be a beta-tester. :-)

[cellio]

Thanks! I'll try moving the last pair around and see if there are any sweet spots.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Right, well that was the sum total of my bright ideas on glasses :)

[cellio]

Hey, I appreciate the help, even if it didn't pan out this time.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

lol no problem, was just thinking "hmm, so much for my bright ideas, hobbit fails to save the world yet again :)". Maybe I'll come up with the perfect life-altering solution next time around! :>

[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.

Sympathy...

[prejlog.livejournal.com]

No advice, just sympathy... I had problems with my current pair of glasses (which are small). Most of it was that they're strong enough that I get headaches with monitor + florescent lights. I did find that when switching back and forth between new ones & old ones, I was disoriented for more than just a few minutes... not much fun.