Prescription eyewear

My first realization that my eyes were not completely perfect came at the age of seventeen. There was a lunar eclipse, and I had set my telescope up on its tripod in the back yard of our home in Montgomery County, MD.

My friend, Steve Pratt, was hanging out at our house that night. I focussed my low-power telescope perfectly on the moon, and marvelled at the detail even this modest device could muster.

I had been an astronomy buff since I was a small child, and could easily locate the common constellations in the night sky. I had a mental calendar of all the regular meteor showers, and for several years had pretty faithfully gone out to watch for at least one night of each shower. In those days, even that close to Washington, D.C. we had a clear view of the night sky, with few streetlights to glare out the heavens.

I gestured to Steve to come over. “Just look at that,” I said, “pretty cool, huh? You can watch the eclipse obscure the moon.”

Steve leaned over and peered through the diminutive telescope. “It’s fuzzy,” he replied.

I bent down to check. “No, it’s perfectly clear,” I responded. “But adjust it, maybe your eyes are different than mine.”

Steve adjusted the focus of the telescope and made the appropriate noises of awe and wonder. I could tell that he didn’t think it was nearly as cool as I did, but I didn’t care.

However, the knowledge that he’d had to adjust the focus troubled me. A few months later I went and saw the eye doctor.

“This is what I call a ‘nuisance prescription’,” he creaked in an ancient, wheezy voice. “Your eyes are fine. There’s a slight astigmatism, and I’ll give you some glasses to help you read signs when you’re driving at night or using your telescope, but I wouldn’t advise wearing them all the time. You’ll just get dependent on them, when really, your eyes are almost perfectly normal.”

Thus I received my first pair of glasses. They had bright red frames, flecked with black, and were “schoolboy style” — covering a large chunk of my face when I wore them. I thought they looked cool, but had a strong suspicion that nobody else did.

Well, after a decade and a half, and many lost glasses later, I finally decided to try out contact lenses. Over the years, my minor prescription has gotten slowly, but steadily, worse. There’s a sliding scale of vision, from -5.00 through +5.00 (actually, it goes beyond that, but past the fives you’re pretty much legally blind without lenses). If you’re in the negatives, you’re nearsighted; your eyes focus light a little too well, and the focal point is in front of your retina. If you’re in the positives, you’re farsighted, and your eyes focus light on a point behind your retina.

Anyway, my right eye is -1.00, while my left is -0.75 now. Something contacts don’t seem to be able to do, while glasses can, is correct for severe astigmatism, or unevenness of the pupil or retina. For that, you need glasses, with a certain offset to handle the irregularity. I have a slight astigmatism, but contacts improve my vision enough that the minor fuzziness around the edges of some letters on a chalkboard doesn’t hurt much.

It’s been an interesting adventure, though. The day I received my initial prescription — this past Thursday — it took me over a half hour to get the darn things in and out the first time. Getting them out isn’t too big a deal. You just slide the lens slightly off the pupil, and then it’s easy to pinch it off your eye. But putting it on! What a chore that was. I kept getting bubbles, and it wouldn’t stick. Ick.

I wore them through the afternoon on Thursday, but discovered by the evening, my eyes were actually really tired. I think it’s because they’ve become so accustomed to focussing at a certain point, that having my eyes constantly corrected is an adjustment. Also, I could feel the lenses in my eyes the first day. I could tell they were there, and every time I blinked, I’d feel them shift around. Today, I’m not noticing them, but I also bought some “artificial tears” to put in to help make sure my eyes stay wet. We live in an extremely dry climate, which has been hell on my eyes for years (lots of redness). Maybe having contact lenses will force me to actually take care of my eyes for the first time 🙂

Anyway, that’s it for my adventure (so far) in contact lenses. It’s something new, and I’m already eyeing the tinted lenses with a little greed. I mean, I could be brown-eyed tomorrow, and violet-eyed the next day! How cool would that be?

Well, probably not cool to anybody else, but cool to me.