Auuug! My Eyes!

Going to the optometrist on Thursday reminded me of my long history of hating optometrists based on several bad experiences. This visit ended badly - I can't wear my contacts for THREE WHOLE DAYS!!! I also had to buy new lenses for my glasses and from now on I have to change my contacts more often, which means more expense for me!

Before Thursday the last time I'd been to an optometrist was almost three years ago. I realized one day in 2002 as I was waiting for the subway, watching one of the lenses pop out of my glasses (for no reason) and skitter across the platform, stopping in the yellow zone just before the tracks, that although I had no health insurance, I had no choice, I had to get new glasses.

Why should the myopic be burdened with such additional health costs? Even if I only wore glasses, I'd still have to go in for an eye exam occasionally, and my experience with health insurance is that it almost never covers new glasses. My mom's health insurance had weird rules, like you could only get new glasses OR new contacts once a year, and you could only get new frames every 5 years, and new glass lenses every other year. So, when I started wearing contacts in 7th grade, I was stuck with the same pair of glasses for the next decade or so, since I had opted to keep updating my contacts instead.

Flashback to 1989/1990...

I'm in 5th grade and my parents notice I'm starting to squint a lot. My parents, who are both near-sighted, take me to an optometrist. The optometrist has me sit in a dark room for a long time, by myself, and I start to think, "They told me to wait here, but it's been a long time, and they shut off the light. I think they've forgotten I'm here."

I went out to the lobby to where my mom was waiting. "I think they forgot about me," I said, "they locked me a dark room."

"No no!" my mom explained, "They're trying to dilate your eyes."

That was the first I'd heard of such a thing! My parents and the doctor explained briefly why eye dilation is necessary for an exam, but I don't remember much of that conversation, only that I learned that's why old people wear those hideous gigantic disposable sunglasses over their regular glasses. (Old people wear them out of necessity, but Rick's friend Dave wears them to make a fashion statement. Or an anti-fashion statement, it's hard to say.)

They offered me some of the aforementioned world's ugliest sunglasses on the way out of the office, but I turned them down. My parents explained that things might look weird for a while, what with my eyes dilated. But things didn't look weird. And my eyes weren't sensitive to the sun. Everything looked normal. I assumed I had ruined the whole dilating thing by leaving the room too soon. Based on my internet research this morning I don't think it's possible that I ruined the procedure - they give you eye drops that relax the pupil's muscles. Maybe my eyes recovered very quickly, who knows?

Anyway, what kind of jerk optometrist doesn't explain to a fifth grader who's never been to an eye exam before what exactly is going on? Some kind of jack-ass, that's who. I never went back to that doctor because he made the snide remark as I was leaving with my first-ever pair of glasses that now I would "... be able to see the individual leaves on trees again!" He actually laughed at me with a coworker at the office. They thought his remark was pretty funny.

I didn't think it was funny, since at the time my vision really wasn't that bad. I COULD see the individual leaves on trees, and I could see the chalkboard just fine in class, even from the back row. Sometimes I had to squint a little, but I didn't see what the big deal was. I didn't wear my glasses all the time back then, and kept them in my desk most of the day.

We found a better optometrist after that, but I still can't believe what a jerk that guy was. I hold him in a similar kind of contempt as I do the dental hygienists who cleaned my teeth growing up.

I ALWAYS brushed my teeth as a kid, but the hygienists would always look at me disappointedly and tell me I had to do a better job of it. Meanwhile my brother would brush his teeth only twice a year, once before each dentist appointment. I could hear the hygienists in the next room saying to him, "Wow, Matt! This is 99% improvement since your last visit!" I swear to god they said this several years in a row.

My brother doesn't need glasses. He got the recessive genes.

(Speaking of dentists, I didn't get a cavity until I was 21. Matt got cavities at about 15 or 16, proving those hygienists were idiots.)

By sixth grade my eyes had worsened. I wore my glasses all the time. I also cam to the troubling realization that I was a horrible, horrible nerd, with or without glasses. You might think I'm a dork now, but a glance at my sixth grade yearbook picture will prove things were ten thousand times worse back in 1991. (We're talking Napoleon Dynamite bad. Even N. laughed out loud at it.) Setting off the picture is the nerdiest pair of glasses possible for that period of time. I chose the biggest frames I could so I wouldn't lose any peripheral vision. That was a tragic mistake for a junior high kid to make (middle school, junior high, whatever).

In a weird way, my dad was the early adaptor of our family and started wearing contacts in 1991 or 1992. I got contacts in 7th grade, which, in a horrifying way, immediately improved my nerdy social standing (it's hard to believe 7th graders are so petty). My mom got contacts a year or two later, ditching her librarian look for good. There's nothing wrong with being a librarian, but it's really annoying to have people think you are one every time you visit the library. Without the glasses, my mom stopped getting questions about where to find books.

The next time I went to an optometrist, they didn't dilate my eyes. In fact, I haven't had my eyes dilated since that first time, which was almost 15 years ago! I asked one optometrist I went to for a while if it was necessary, and he said something about new technology making it so you don't have to dilate eyes anymore.

Maybe that guy was smoking crack, I don't know. All of my research today has proved otherwise. One's eyes probably ought to be dilated once every other year or so for a more thorough exam.

The crack smoker was a guy running a very family-ish optometry office near my parent's place in Michigan. I went there for four years or so, whenever I went home for Christmas, for as long as my mom's insurance would cover it. That doctor was nice, but some of his equipment seemed a bit antiquated, and if you asked him a question he'd talk your ear off.

I don't know if other patients ask questions or what. But if someone's blowing puffs of air into my eyes with a crazy machine or putting in drops to make the stains on my eyes look florescent, I'd like to know what that test is for! I don't care to know on a cellular level what's happening, but I'd like to have some general idea. (Dr. Shovels would explain to the level of minutia, and relate anecdotes... you know, I'd also rather not spend all day at the optometrists, either.)

The optometrist I went to before the visit last Thursday was a guy on Avenue A. Well, the glasses shop was on Avenue A. I quickly discovered that the doctor was only in a couple times a week (I assumed he traveled to other shops on other days). When I went for an appointment it was really rushed. There were dozens of people in the small shop, and the doctor hurried through a series of appointments.

It wasn't all bad. My new prescription made my vision a little better than 20/20. It was maybe 20/15. Better still, my new lenses didn't pop out of my glasses and go flying into the subway tracks for no reason. The first new frames I'd had in a decade cost a chunk of change I really didn't have, but I could actually use them, since at last the prescription was up to date.

But I didn't like Doctor Rush-Job and I wasn't going to go back. That guy saw me for like five minutes. Plus Avenue A and 3rd Street was way more convenient back when I actually lived in the East Village.

From that visit in 2002 I got a renewed prescription for contacts, and I bought a year's supply of contacts that you switch out monthly. That is to say, you dispose of your current pair and break open a new pair of contacts each month. But from 2002 until basically now, I've been pretty broke, and even with health insurance I've never had vision coverage. So instead of changing my contacts once a month, I've changed them maybe once every other month to make them last longer.

I only threw them out when they started to hurt, or if I accidently ripped them. In the meantime I tried to keep them as clean as I could.

Turns out that was a big mistake. Those one-month contacts were more likely the popular two-week disposables. Not cleaning them and changing them often enough can lead to staining your eyes. You can read about it here:

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/eyestain.htm

"The severity of staining seemed to depend on how often the subjects replaced their lenses with a new pair; if they wore conventional rather than disposable lenses; and how meticulous they were about cleaning their lenses."

So on Thursday my new optometrist from the LensCrafters on 8th street wasn't very pleased with what she found. She gave me a thorough exam, although I'd opted not to have my eyes dilated, assuming it wasn't really necessary. She checked for staining on the surface of my eyes and found some stains. Heck, maybe it was a lot... she told me to buy some specific eyedrops and use them four times a day for the next three or four days while I refrain from wearing my contacts. She also told me that the last guy had over-corrected my vision, which can be bad for you in the long run. So I've got a new, weaker prescription for my contacts and glasses. (Goodbye, 20/15 super-human vision!)

I think the last optometrist also f--ed up in giving me the same prescription for both eyes. One of my eyes is weaker than the other. It's always been that way. Apparently it was also that way for the last two years, I just didn't have the right prescription for it. (-4.0 in one eye, -3.75 in the other, in case you were wondering. And that's only moderate myopia, whereas in 5th grade, you can bet it was only mild.)

For a long-ass article on vision, check out the wikipedia.

I hate wearing my glasses all day long! From the time I started wearing contacts in 7th grade, I pretty much wore them all day every day unless I was sick, or if I ripped or lost a contact or I was too tired to put them in.

Any kind of nerdy aesthetics aside, I hate losing my peripheral vision. I hate it when it rains or snows and I'm wearing glasses and my vision is impaired. I hate even the tiniest smudge on the lens, but it's impossible to avoid! I hate that my new frames are small enough to look decent, but they're so small it's hard to make eye contact with people. I hate that it's harder to see things at night because of the reflections in my glasses. I hate it when you come in from the cold and your glasses fog up and you can't see for several minutes! Most of all I hate wearing glasses when I work out, because the sweat makes them slide down my nose. Then I go to wipe my face and forget I'm wearing them and horribly smear sweat-streaks across my glasses and then I can't see peripherally OR head-on! Gah!! Glasses suck!

I do have a new respect for glasses after reading Name of the Rose.

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