My Eyes!

It was 1979, in second grade, when I began wearing prescription eyeglasses to correct mild myopia. I'd loved the fashion frames I'd seen at Osco Drugs, and often wished I needed to wear the cool accessories.

The novelty of actually needing glasses quickly wore off, especially as my vision deteriorated and the lenses got thicker. As I got older, I felt like no one realized how pretty my eyes were because they were obscured behind "Coke bottle" bottoms.

I became interested in the theater in 9th grade, when I ended up in an upperclassman production at my private school, courtesy of my having thrown up in PE after having begged my PE teacher to let me stop running as I was having an asthma attack and his insisting I "run it off." I guess the principal of the school decided at that point I'd be better suited for the dramatic arts.

In that play, I had to remove my glasses during performances so they wouldn't reflect the lights and hide my emotive eyes, as they did in daily life.

That performance was a roller coaster, because I genuinely cannot see without corrective lenses. Over that summer, my parents allowed me to get contact lenses, a year earlier than the previously-stated 16-year-old rule. Yay!

For years, I kept my contact solution in my bedside table, taking my contacts out right before I went to sleep, and putting my contacts in before my feet hit the floor in the morning. In college, I developed some eye problems and an optometrist told me that if I didn't start wearing glasses a few hours a day, I could expect not to be able to wear contacts anymore after another couple of years.

It's always felt like my eyes were a bit of a time bomb. Well before my dad was the age I am now, he'd had glaucoma, cataracts, and two of his three retinal detachments. I made it a point to wear glasses a few hours as night, and as long as I could in the morning, because I did not want to go back to wearing glasses full-time. I still had some self-consciousness about wearing glasses even that little; I didn't want my husband to look me in the eye and would often take glasses off to have a deep conversation, even though that meant having to guess at facial expressions.

One cool thing has happened as I've aged, and apparently it's typical: My far-out vision has improved.  Until I turned 46 about a year and a half ago, I never had a problem seeing things close-up, either. In fact, I made fun of James having difficulty with a game we played in Haiti that required reading a small word through a clear plastic window.

However, within weeks (maybe days?) of my 46th birthday, I suddenly found that it wasn't as easy to read magazines as it had been before. Whereas I could always make out print in low light, now I needed brightness. I eventually bought a couple of pair of cheaters at Walgreen's (Is Osco even a thing anymore?), and that was fine... until my close-in vision got bad enough that I thought I finally needed to get multi-focal glasses to wear.

When I have my contacts in, it's no big deal to put on reading glasses. But once I take my contacts out, when I need to read, I have to take my glasses off and hold whatever it is about two inches from my eyeballs. That doesn't really work with a laptop.

So I had a plan to set an appointment with an optometrist. I just didn't do it for the longest time.

THEN I started having problems with my eyes again. It always felt like there was something in my left eye. I'd take out my contact, wash it, put it back in. I'd switch contacts (they were the same prescription). I'd get new ones. But my left eye always seemed to have this greasy film, which I began to realize had nothing to do with my contact; it just bothered me more when I had my contacts in.

I was wearing my contacts less, and was afraid we might be hitting that "you're just too old for contacts" age.

And I set an appointment for the eye doctor.

The night before, I was lying in Mal's room with the lights off, looking in the general direction of the smoke alarm, when I realized that I couldn't see the light on it with my left eye if I was looking straight at it. When I looked away, my peripheral vision picked it up. I tried this with other light sources in the darkened room, to the same effect. Was it retinal? Ugh, I hoped not.

My appointment was the day before Thanksgiving. Several decades ago, my dad woke up on Thanksgiving day unable to see out of one eye. His retina had detached, and though he didn't know it, he did know he wouldn't be able to see a doctor until Monday. He also knew that my mom would be extremely worried... so he didn't say a word about it all weekend! And I hoped that this wasn't going to be a new family tradition.

At my appointment, we did all of the things, including having my pupils dilated for the first time in probably 20 years. Fortunately, the "thing" in my left eye is just a clump of floaters that piled up and are sitting on the edge of my macula, so whereas most floaters eventually... well, float out of my line of vision, these don't.

The optometrist did ask when I started noticing floaters, and that seemed like a funny question because I don't remember ever not having them. When I was a little kid and was bored in church or trying to fall asleep, I'd play "chase" with the floaters. If you don't have them, this probably makes no sense. It would look like I was just rolling my eyes and having a fit or something. Or watching a moth. Anyway, I guess floaters usually age-related, but it seems like I've always had them.

He said that it might take a few weeks or a few months, but eventually gravity would pull them down further, they'd break up, and my vision would return to normal. It's still annoying, but now I know I don't need to worry about them so it's easier to try not to think about it and eventually I stop noticing it.

Also, I have developed a pronounced astigmatism in my right eye, that has become worse than the one in my left eye that I've known about for decades. So he changed my prescription in my left eye, and it's the lowest powered contact I've ever worn.

I did get a prescription for multi-focal glasses for the first time ever. Mal helped me pick out some cool purple bejeweled frames, and now we're just waiting for them to come back from the magic glasses factory.

He did say that I have a bit more discoloration in my retina than you'd expect in a person my age (BECAUSE I'M SO YOUNG), which isn't a surprise given genetics. I'm going back in three months to see if it's pretty much the same or if it's changed, so we'll know what we're dealing with.

Otherwise, my eyes are really healthy, and that's good to know.

Oh! I did change to daily wear contacts, which I can only afford because James has a good job. If that ever changes, I'll have to do more extended-wear but I'm loving these. I haven't had to use allergy eye drops since I got them, and I was using them every other day or so.

This reminds me of a question I have: Why are daily-wear contacts so much cheaper per lens than extended-wear? Like, I get that extended-wear need to be more durable... but they're 20x more expensive, or more... and that doesn't make sense to this lay person. If you know, please educate me!