It’s been a long time, maybe 7 years, since I had glasses that were the correct prescription. Most of the time I wear a contact lens, with the glasses only being used if I lose the lens or my eye is bothering me when I am sick. Last June I had surgery on my right arm, which luckily only prevented me from wearing a contact lens for a few days, but it got me thinking – there are going to be times when I might need to rely more on my glasses (as my previous doctor reminded me, I am over 50), so they really should be a more current prescription. The prescription was so far out of date that there is no way I could drive or do serious computer work while wearing them. So I went for an eye exam, found out that my contact lens prescription had not changed, so I got updated lenses for my glasses to match. Good news was I could use my old frames, but the whole thing still cost me about $800. Progressive lenses, sunglasses clip, and some other necessary stuff that slips my mind at the moment, but considering I probably won’t need new glasses for another couple years, I’m ok with the cost. Not sure how much VSP will reimburse, but it went on my flex card so I am not worried.
10-14 days were more like a month and a half, but I finally got the notice yesterday that they were in. Couldn’t pick them up last night since I had to rush home to beat the rain, but I had to be back at work today, which put me in the right area to pick them up.
Wow. For the first time in forever I can actually really see with glasses. There was no transition period either – putting on glasses before usually meant a couple minutes while my eyes adjusted to the difference in prescription. This time it was instant. I took out my contact lens, put on the glasses, and I could read a sign on the wall immediately. Decided to give them a test – drive the Slingshot home with them on. I figured if I can see well enough to find the Slingshot in the parking lot, I was okay to drive home. ?
First stop, pet store to get more Beanie food. Pulled into the lot and saw a sign for Christina’s Reptile Outreach. So, I got the bird food and then went to say hi to her. The look on her face said either “who the hell is this weirdo” (I doubt she’s ever seen me with glasses and it’s been maybe 4 years since I spoke with her face to face) or “what the hell does this weirdo want.” Either way, nice to see you!
Pet store was north of the eyeglass place, so now that I was headed south for home I realized that it was around 2:00, the sun was overhead and in front of me. My normal riding sunglasses are tight against my face (they are kinda like ski goggles) but the gap between my glasses and my face allowed the sun to sneak in around the sunglasses frame. Not that big a deal but something to keep in mind.
Another thing that I am hopefully going to get used to: I am not blind in my right eye, but my vision has been bad enough for long enough that my brain doesn’t even try to use it. Unless I block my left eye, my brain doesn’t process what the right eye sees. For one thing I don’t bother with a contact lens in the right eye, so any image I see with it is going to be blurry, which makes it easy for my brain to ignore it. My new glasses are the correct prescription for both eyes, so now my right eye is trying to focus on stuff. That’s hard enough, but my right eye also does not look straight ahead. It’s always looking off to the side, so the two images don’t align as they would with a person who has two working eyes. Without a corrective lens on my right eye, it can’t focus on anything so my brain has learned to ignore it. With a corrective lens, suddenly I am getting ghost images. My right eye is so misaligned that if I close the left eye, whatever I was looking at shifts a couple inches to the right. It’s as if my brain woke up and realized “Oh, wow, there’s an image coming out of the right eye” and it tries to process it. It can’t and probably never will be able to (I have been like this for over 40 years) but that doesn’t stop it from trying.
Got home and force of habit made me take the sunglasses off. Whoops. No stupid, these just unclip, like with magnets and stuff. Did the same thing later; I have to wear reading glasses with the contact lens to do computer work or read. So here I am typing away when I realize I am hungry. I have a bad habit of misplacing my reading glasses. I have a pair on, go somewhere else in the house and take them off and leave them, so when I need them later I can’t remember what I did with them. I bought a few extra pair, so now I have a pair for school, one for my office, and one of those folding pair that stays in my backpack. I think my wife even carries a pair around with her because she knows me. So again force of habit, I get up and take off my glasses to leave them next to my computer. Dumbass. This will take some getting used to.