New glasses, and rusty nails :-|
May. 27th, 2010 01:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urocyonIngvar and I met up at the station on his way in from work, and we went to pick up the new glasses.
There had been some bizarre problem with his sunglasses, something about the level of extra-thin lenses he'd picked not working with the frame size. He actually stopped in yesterday to find out what was going on with them, and had to pick new frames for the sunglasses, because even the not-quite-so-high-index tinted ones wouldn't work in the initial frames. Still, he was under the impression that the regular glasses had arrived. As it turns out, they also had to switch his regular lenses for the not-quite-so-high-index ones, and they weren't there yet either. Too bad they didn't catch the conflict before sending the order off to be made up. At least that's £30 per lens refund due, IIRC.
Both of my pairs were there. After trying them on, I'm really not looking forward to putting them on in the morning as the optician suggested. I've been wearing glasses for 25+ years now, and this is the worst prescription change so far. It had been about three and a half years, and I wish I could find the old prescription to compare. (Naturally, Ingvar's old one is handily tacked on the kitchen bulletin board, and mine has been devoured by the Diopter Gnome.) In past, I've expected to have a headache, dizziness, nausea, and lurch around like a drunken sailor who hasn't gotten his land legs back, for about a week. That I was expecting, with the astigmatism changes in particular.
With these, wearing them for a couple of minutes made me feel like someone had jammed a rusty nail into my left eye socket, and a couple more into the cheekbone. (I just double checked that the sunglasses were the same, and it happened again!) Very unhappy muscles there. I am also having the problems with worse-than-nothing blurriness through the lens which changed a lot more (the left) as mentioned here; that person described the sensation well: "The right lens is perfect, but when I look through both lenses, it feels like some one just punched me square in the face." In a particularly nauseating way.
The left eye also feels like it's getting pulled toward my nose.
If the prescription is wrong, it's consistent between the regular glasses and sunglasses. There is no prism in either lens (at least, there shouldn't be), but that left lens feels horribly like the ones I got for strabismus when I was four or five, when an inexperienced opthalmologist freaked out at the way my eyes were tracking when he was treating a corneal dog scratch. He was worried about amblyopia developing because of the strabismus, and went on about the possibility of my going blind without swift treatment! (That still hasn't happened.) That is probably what got me so upset about these glasses, since that was such a miserable month or so that I still remember it--and my parents were afraid not to make me keep wearing the horrible glasses, in the face of migraines and vomiting. Finally, my mom took me back to see the practice's older partner, who just said, "Kids' muscle coordination develops at different rates. Ditch the glasses and [painful] exercises." I've still got some degree of strabismus. It apparently goes along with ASDs a lot, and is not really a problem unless I'm really tired and/or stressed. (Like in a doctor's office with someone staring into my eyes. :-| )
Now I am wondering if a sufficient cylinder and axis change might be pulling my eye, and if the strabismus (more noticeable in the left eye, which drifts toward the outside) may be aggravating the problem. Since kids with uncorrected/improperly corrected vision problems can show strabismus, I'm wondering if this might not have gotten worse lately because the prescription was way off and causing a lot of eyestrain and muscle fatigue; I have been noticing it more, but blaming it on stress. And now I might also be noticing the cylinder/axis changes more, with that eye wandering because of muscle fatigue? *scratches head* I never really looked into the intermittent exotropia before, since it's rarely been a problem (well, other than with depth perception and the like, but I'm used to that by now!).
Well, I did get into two fender-benders before I learned--definitely the hard way!--to compensate for the truly crappy peripheral vision on that side. One happened while I still had my learner's permit, and my mom got ticketed over it. But other than that... ;)
Interesting article I ran across: Ninety Percent of Children With Intermittent Exotropia Will Become Nearsighted by 20 Years of Age*. My left eye is now at -7.50 (no wonder they were pushing the really high-index lenses!), while the right is -5.50. The astigmatism is also a lot stronger on the left (cyl. +1.50 vs. +0.50).
My wonky vestibular system and some other visual processing weirdness are no doubt also involved, and I seem pretty sensitive to input changes.
At any rate, I was hoping they would check to make sure the lens was, indeed, the proper prescription before we left, but I have trouble dealing with things like that. It's frustrating. They saw I was having problems, and apparently did not find the reaction unusual with the prescription/eyeball-shape change. (Yay, shapeshifting eyeballs! :/) The suggestion? I should put them on in again in the morning when I haven't been wearing the old glasses all day, and wear them as much as possible to adjust. And come back in a week or so if it hasn't improved.
With any luck, it won't feel as awful when there is not already a day's worth of muscle strain and fatigue on the left side.
Has anyone else had this kind of thing happen with a new prescription, with myopia and/or astigmatism changes--and the right prescription? ;) If so, how long did it take your eyes and brain to adjust?
_____________
* Along with a semi-disturbing one from a couple of years ago: Eye Divergence In Children Triples Risk Of Mental Illness, '"They can hopefully be alert to the earliest signs of psychiatric problems in patients with exotropia, so they can consider having them seen by a psychologist or psychiatrist."' Yeah, it's a neurological difference.
One parent's reaction to reading about this? "I feel like I have a time bomb here and will never be able to relax." Thankfully, someone chimed in with just what I was thinking. I will go ahead and quote the whole message:
Edit: I tried to play around with an interesting-looking blur simulator, based on entering a prescription. That didn't work so well with mine, which gave "beyond simulation range". Odd. Apparently it "[s]imulates prescriptions from +5 to -5 for the spherical error and +5 to -5 for astigmatism."
There had been some bizarre problem with his sunglasses, something about the level of extra-thin lenses he'd picked not working with the frame size. He actually stopped in yesterday to find out what was going on with them, and had to pick new frames for the sunglasses, because even the not-quite-so-high-index tinted ones wouldn't work in the initial frames. Still, he was under the impression that the regular glasses had arrived. As it turns out, they also had to switch his regular lenses for the not-quite-so-high-index ones, and they weren't there yet either. Too bad they didn't catch the conflict before sending the order off to be made up. At least that's £30 per lens refund due, IIRC.
Both of my pairs were there. After trying them on, I'm really not looking forward to putting them on in the morning as the optician suggested. I've been wearing glasses for 25+ years now, and this is the worst prescription change so far. It had been about three and a half years, and I wish I could find the old prescription to compare. (Naturally, Ingvar's old one is handily tacked on the kitchen bulletin board, and mine has been devoured by the Diopter Gnome.) In past, I've expected to have a headache, dizziness, nausea, and lurch around like a drunken sailor who hasn't gotten his land legs back, for about a week. That I was expecting, with the astigmatism changes in particular.
With these, wearing them for a couple of minutes made me feel like someone had jammed a rusty nail into my left eye socket, and a couple more into the cheekbone. (I just double checked that the sunglasses were the same, and it happened again!) Very unhappy muscles there. I am also having the problems with worse-than-nothing blurriness through the lens which changed a lot more (the left) as mentioned here; that person described the sensation well: "The right lens is perfect, but when I look through both lenses, it feels like some one just punched me square in the face." In a particularly nauseating way.
The left eye also feels like it's getting pulled toward my nose.
If the prescription is wrong, it's consistent between the regular glasses and sunglasses. There is no prism in either lens (at least, there shouldn't be), but that left lens feels horribly like the ones I got for strabismus when I was four or five, when an inexperienced opthalmologist freaked out at the way my eyes were tracking when he was treating a corneal dog scratch. He was worried about amblyopia developing because of the strabismus, and went on about the possibility of my going blind without swift treatment! (That still hasn't happened.) That is probably what got me so upset about these glasses, since that was such a miserable month or so that I still remember it--and my parents were afraid not to make me keep wearing the horrible glasses, in the face of migraines and vomiting. Finally, my mom took me back to see the practice's older partner, who just said, "Kids' muscle coordination develops at different rates. Ditch the glasses and [painful] exercises." I've still got some degree of strabismus. It apparently goes along with ASDs a lot, and is not really a problem unless I'm really tired and/or stressed. (Like in a doctor's office with someone staring into my eyes. :-| )
Now I am wondering if a sufficient cylinder and axis change might be pulling my eye, and if the strabismus (more noticeable in the left eye, which drifts toward the outside) may be aggravating the problem. Since kids with uncorrected/improperly corrected vision problems can show strabismus, I'm wondering if this might not have gotten worse lately because the prescription was way off and causing a lot of eyestrain and muscle fatigue; I have been noticing it more, but blaming it on stress. And now I might also be noticing the cylinder/axis changes more, with that eye wandering because of muscle fatigue? *scratches head* I never really looked into the intermittent exotropia before, since it's rarely been a problem (well, other than with depth perception and the like, but I'm used to that by now!).
Well, I did get into two fender-benders before I learned--definitely the hard way!--to compensate for the truly crappy peripheral vision on that side. One happened while I still had my learner's permit, and my mom got ticketed over it. But other than that... ;)
Interesting article I ran across: Ninety Percent of Children With Intermittent Exotropia Will Become Nearsighted by 20 Years of Age*. My left eye is now at -7.50 (no wonder they were pushing the really high-index lenses!), while the right is -5.50. The astigmatism is also a lot stronger on the left (cyl. +1.50 vs. +0.50).
My wonky vestibular system and some other visual processing weirdness are no doubt also involved, and I seem pretty sensitive to input changes.
At any rate, I was hoping they would check to make sure the lens was, indeed, the proper prescription before we left, but I have trouble dealing with things like that. It's frustrating. They saw I was having problems, and apparently did not find the reaction unusual with the prescription/eyeball-shape change. (Yay, shapeshifting eyeballs! :/) The suggestion? I should put them on in again in the morning when I haven't been wearing the old glasses all day, and wear them as much as possible to adjust. And come back in a week or so if it hasn't improved.
With any luck, it won't feel as awful when there is not already a day's worth of muscle strain and fatigue on the left side.
Has anyone else had this kind of thing happen with a new prescription, with myopia and/or astigmatism changes--and the right prescription? ;) If so, how long did it take your eyes and brain to adjust?
_____________
* Along with a semi-disturbing one from a couple of years ago: Eye Divergence In Children Triples Risk Of Mental Illness, '"They can hopefully be alert to the earliest signs of psychiatric problems in patients with exotropia, so they can consider having them seen by a psychologist or psychiatrist."' Yeah, it's a neurological difference.
One parent's reaction to reading about this? "I feel like I have a time bomb here and will never be able to relax." Thankfully, someone chimed in with just what I was thinking. I will go ahead and quote the whole message:
It's always important to remember that correlation does not mean causation. The study found a correlation (or co-incidence) of exotropia and later mental illness. This does not prove that one condition cuases the other. It shows that this is an area that deserves further study.
In this study, "mental illness" was defined as ANY condition in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness). This covers a huge range of conditions. The study does not indicate how many patients were diagnosed with more mild conditions like anxiety problems vs. more severe mental disorders like schizophernia.
My son has High Functioning Autism and it is well known that many children with Autism Spectrum Disorders have vision problems beyond simple refractive errors. My son has macular hypoplasia contributing to stabismus and bilateral amblyopia. He also is very farsighted with has high astigmatism. When he was diagnosed with autism, I had to sign a paper stating that I had been informed of the relationship between autism and vision problems and that he was already seeing a PO. (His vision problems were diagnosed a few months before his autism diagnosis).
Personally, I think this is an subject that needs to be studied more. After all, many vision problems are in fact problems with the brain, not with the eyes.
Edit: I tried to play around with an interesting-looking blur simulator, based on entering a prescription. That didn't work so well with mine, which gave "beyond simulation range". Odd. Apparently it "[s]imulates prescriptions from +5 to -5 for the spherical error and +5 to -5 for astigmatism."
Re: This is why I don't wear glasses.
Date: 2010-05-28 12:22 am (UTC)At least I think that was similar to what she was talking about, but from the way the lens was installed in the frame, misaligned with the pupil. My description could probably still be a lot better. :)