Sunday, June 03, 2012

Half my myopia sorted: June 2012

My two eyes have very different focal lengths - is that the right term?  One is around -1/2 dioptre but the other is -4 dioptres.  This has advantages in that I can read very small print with one eye, like the ingredients on tins and the warnings on medical leaflets, and I can see well enough to drive with the other eye.  However, the disadvantages are that only one eye is working at a time, the two eyes are quite imbalanced and if I want to work on the computer and read a document at the same time (like when I'm marking OU assignments or copy-typing an historical diary) then I need to swap at least two pairs if not three pairs of glasses.  Vari-focals don't work because I have to throw my head back to see through the short sighted bit at the bottom and in the office everyone seems to fix their screens high up which makes the neck ache even more!

I had a problem that glasses didn't solve - exacerbated it even - and I was not going to go down the irreversible route of surgery.

But then I read of ortho-keratic lenses, discovered someone who could prescribe and fit them, and now have one lens that I wear every night in the very myopic eye.  It's wonderful.  In the morning, I look out of my bedroom window and can see into the distance with both eyes - I usen't to be able to do that.  When I sit at meetings, I can see the person at the end of the table and don't need to put on glasses to read the papers in front of me. It's wonderful.

But it's temporary.  If you don't like it, don't like wearing the lens at night, can't see well enough, you can go back to your body's choice of focus by simply no longer wearing the lens.  Or if you lose the b* lens, you go back.  And I dropped my lens the other night.  I heard it hit the wood of the dressing table, thought it had slipped between a piece of china and a tissue, but it simply disappeared.  I searched for 15 minutes before I was too tired and fed up to look any more and went to bed.  Husband and I searched in the morning, but it was not to be found, so I had to ring the optometrist and order a new one (£50).  In the meantime, my eye has been reverting to its normal -4 dioptres myopia and I can't see the detail of the blossom outside my bedroom window, nor the face of the person at the end of the table at yesterday's meeting.  The lens arrived today, and tomorrow I'll be able to see again as I want to.
2018: I found the missing lens! It had dropped into an open envelope propped up at the front of an open drawer of the dressing table.

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