Figuring after the great play debacle, I’d better get something done. I think I’m going to get contacts for far-vision and reading glasses for up-close use with the same contacts. My astigmatism isn’t much of an issue in far-vision, but really is close-up, so that’s not too hard a correction to make.
Headed to the optometrist today.
by CJ | Apr 22, 2011 | Journal | 10 comments
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I do hope they are open for you this Good Friday?
They are.
And there’s a nice surprise—if it works. They’re asking me to try concentric ring bifocal contacts. It gets past the situation that they can’t grind lenses to cope with—they think. My doc works in Walmart: she’s been there—I think my last visit with in 2009, and we get along very well. I’ve been to the fanciest optometrist in town, and got irritated after they’d screwed up my prescription for the 3rd try running, making me wait for weeks and weeks; went to Dr. Tracy, and (because I was a little iffy about a Walmart office) I tested her: didn’t tell her a thing. She took a quarter of the time to come up with the prescription, which worked better, and got it right the first time. So I’ve gone to her ever since.
And these are a trial lens set, so we will see: if it is do-able they will replace ALL glasses, when before I have had to have several pair, and am helpless without them.
I’m glad this is working out for you.
While I normally avoid Wal-Mart (I refer to it Hades or Hell), I’ve had some friends that were really decent optometrists and pharmacists take jobs at Wal-Mart and Target because they just didn’t want to run their own businesses and wanted the stability of a corporate job. And sometimes, they aren’t working for the store, they are working for a totally separate company that has merely leased space in the store.
Just like any other service, once you find a gem, no matter how unlikely the location, you just have to keep going back! I’m glad you found a good one.
I feel for you on the contacts/glasses thing. I’m going through a minor retina issue on one eye which is preventing me from replacing my prescription on my glasses. To top that, I also have some depth perception issues from not having my strabismus repaired until I was 4 or 5 (now they do it at 8 months). I’m considering going monovision with reading in one eye and distance in the other. I’m even considering doing that with laser if I ever get the courage to get my eyes done.
Seriously, the monovision thing can be cool: I’ve done it for years and years. First time they fitted me for monovision contacts, they were aghast that I had driven myself there, they wanted to help me over curbs—silly people: I’ve done it all my life, in another sense, using one eye and then the other for specific distances, and I had not 2 seconds of adjustment to the situation.
Now my eyes are both rotten enough both need correction.
There’s a funny, though: at age 50-something an optometrist corrected my eyes to work together. I hoped television would be clearer: but it wasn’t. What I couldn’t stop looking at was the ‘box’, the telly itself, because its geometry was fascinating, like looking ‘around’ something in 3-d. But then I had to fly, and I usually didn’t wear glasses for distance, but I had some; took off from DFW at dark, with all the lights, and had on the correcting glasses, and got the full 3-D effect of the lights outside the window: first time in my entire flying experience I’d ever been queasy in the air.
CJ,
You might Google on PixelOptics emPower. They are apparently just coming on the market. Electronic eyeglasses. Which need recharging every few days. Something else to lose, forget, etc. Rather expensive as I understand it. Not for me at this point; after cataract surgery on both eyes (almost ten years apart), my eyes seem to be working pretty good.
Enjoy!
Frank.
CJ, I have been using multifocal contacts for a number of years and find them very good, except in low light situations (dimly lit restaurant, for example), or with very small print. As it was explained to me, essentially you have two different prescriptions: far vision for the dominant eye, and near vision for the non-dominant eye. The brain adjusts to coordinate the vision between both eyes. If you have larger-than-average pupils, you will sometimes catch the edge of the next concentric ring if you look sharp left or right, and that certainly can be mildly annoying, but overall they’re well worth the money in my opinion. Hopefully they will work for you as well. Good luck with them!
Thank you! I’m really hoping I can make a go of these!
Oh, CJ, how I understand these last two posts. I’ve yet to find a good opthalmologist/optometrist here in Georgia, and I have bad vision. I get my new lenses (progressive, transitions, etc. – all the bells and whistles) and I can bet you that I will be wearing my glasses from 2007 in a few weeks. No cataracts to stop my eyes from being correctable yet, and contacts – well, you mentioned it: 6 Eyes is what I call myself because I need reading glasses as well. I’ll be interested in hearing how these new contacts work.
BTW, no one paid attention to my vision until my 5th grade teacher switched the seating arrangement after Spring Break: I couldn’t see the board for the math test, so I made up my own! She kept me after class and walked with me to the nurse (we always had a nurse on campus in the 50s). It seems I slid through the eye exams at the b beginning of each year because I memorized what everyone said before me (they did them alphabetically, and my last name started w/an “N”). I was one of those people who couldn’t flunk a test!
My left eye is 20/40 and my right eye is 20/200. If I cover my left eye and look at the eye chart, all I see is a white blur. However, I read without my glasses with my right eye and my left eye just tunes out. After a heavy reading session, it takes several minutes for my brain to remember I have a left eye. I’ve been in trifocals for years. I measured the distance from my head to my computer screen (I earn my living on a computer too), and that is how my middle “focal” is set. On top of everything else, I have optical migraines. (If you are going to have migraines, that’s the kind to have — no pain, just a fluttery thing in your field of vision. Mine usually last about 30 minutes!)
WOL, so sorry about you having any migraines! I’ve never had one but remember driving w/my cousin and she said, “grab the wheel”. I kept asking what was wrong, but she was hurting so much she couldn’t even talk. We got to the side of the road and I drove her home. That tunnel that comes with some migraines occluded her vision to the point that she couldn’t see.
I’ve got my glasses’ progressives set so that I can read comfortably!