I loathe and detest glasses. Not I hasten to add those crystal goblets purchased lovingly by me over the years following the strict lead of my shopaholic mother, but rather those over priced pieces of ground glass which perch on my nose and are supposed to give me perfect vision.
They have never given me perfect vision and I find the points of contact that a pair of glasses makes on my face to be areas of real irritation.
Contact lenses (in spite of their multifarious negative points) did seem to be The Answer. The hard pieces of unyielding substance that formed my first pair of contact lenses reduced me to the position of a lachrymose nun: I cried all the time and I could not raise my eyes from the ground. Every time I attempted to look at something normally it felt as though someone had knifed my eyes. The famous scene in Le Chien Andelou where an eye is slit open could have been the everyday story of any contact lens beginner at the time when I was fitted for them.
The namby-pamby (that is the first time that I have ever written that) plastics which form modern contact lenses mean that there is no ‘getting used to them period of pain’ for wearers. They simply pop them in their eyes and carry on living. So unfair!
Apart from getting specs of dust under the lenses – and believe me you do not know what real pain is until that happens – there is also the matter of keeping them clean.
I could go through the different solutions that I have had to use: the various design of container that I have tried and lost; the inventive ways of cleaning lenses when you have no solution; the inventive way of storing lenses when you have lost the container and the numerous hunts for a small transparent object when it has popped out of your eye – but I won’t. Suffice to say that I did not look after my lenses and cleaning them (Any opticians reading this should turn away at this point) meant sucking them.
The advent of disposable lenses seemed perfect for me. And when the disposable bit of the life of the lens was a single day then I thought that the New Order had arrived!
One day lenses were more comfortable and you didn’t have to look after them. All problems solved.
Apart from my eyes. My progressive myopia was soon joined by its opposite and I became long sighted as well.
Not worry there are such things, believe it or not, as double sighted lenses and graded lenses and vari focal and dual focal and every other type of focal lens so that the patient should be able to read and at the same time see distances.
I have tried every variant lens known to ophthalmic science (there’s a contradiction if ever there was one) and not one of them works with my eyes. I have ended up with lenses for each eye which do different jobs; the lens in one eye is supposed to be for reading and the other is for distances. “Your brain,” my optician blithely said, “will work out how to use them.”
My brain will have none of it. The lenses are a compromise and my brain knows it. I can sort of see close up for some text and I can see well enough to drive, but neither is perfect.
I also have yet another pair of glasses (there was a time when I kept the opticians going singlehandedly with my eyes, so to speak) made for some inexplicable reason by the car maker Jaguar which are supposed to be used with my contact lenses when I read! I know, I know, it seems stupid to me too, but I bought into this ‘solution’ and I have, at last decided to put it to the test.
The conditions in my present school are, shall we say, less demanding than in my last and so I have decided to see if this compromise will work.
I will, of course forget my glasses, or forget to put my contact lenses in or a combination of both but I do have one factor working to ensure that I remember. I am beginning to develop those little indentations on either side of my nose where the kidney bean shaped piece of plastic holds the frame – and that is simply unacceptable.
So vanity is the driving force behind my experiment – and there have been worse motivations, so don’t sneer.
I await the panic which will accompany my now unaccustomed insertion of contact lenses in the dark.
It is a situation ripe for chaos – just the way to start a school day!
They have never given me perfect vision and I find the points of contact that a pair of glasses makes on my face to be areas of real irritation.
Contact lenses (in spite of their multifarious negative points) did seem to be The Answer. The hard pieces of unyielding substance that formed my first pair of contact lenses reduced me to the position of a lachrymose nun: I cried all the time and I could not raise my eyes from the ground. Every time I attempted to look at something normally it felt as though someone had knifed my eyes. The famous scene in Le Chien Andelou where an eye is slit open could have been the everyday story of any contact lens beginner at the time when I was fitted for them.
The namby-pamby (that is the first time that I have ever written that) plastics which form modern contact lenses mean that there is no ‘getting used to them period of pain’ for wearers. They simply pop them in their eyes and carry on living. So unfair!
Apart from getting specs of dust under the lenses – and believe me you do not know what real pain is until that happens – there is also the matter of keeping them clean.
I could go through the different solutions that I have had to use: the various design of container that I have tried and lost; the inventive ways of cleaning lenses when you have no solution; the inventive way of storing lenses when you have lost the container and the numerous hunts for a small transparent object when it has popped out of your eye – but I won’t. Suffice to say that I did not look after my lenses and cleaning them (Any opticians reading this should turn away at this point) meant sucking them.
The advent of disposable lenses seemed perfect for me. And when the disposable bit of the life of the lens was a single day then I thought that the New Order had arrived!
One day lenses were more comfortable and you didn’t have to look after them. All problems solved.
Apart from my eyes. My progressive myopia was soon joined by its opposite and I became long sighted as well.
Not worry there are such things, believe it or not, as double sighted lenses and graded lenses and vari focal and dual focal and every other type of focal lens so that the patient should be able to read and at the same time see distances.
I have tried every variant lens known to ophthalmic science (there’s a contradiction if ever there was one) and not one of them works with my eyes. I have ended up with lenses for each eye which do different jobs; the lens in one eye is supposed to be for reading and the other is for distances. “Your brain,” my optician blithely said, “will work out how to use them.”
My brain will have none of it. The lenses are a compromise and my brain knows it. I can sort of see close up for some text and I can see well enough to drive, but neither is perfect.
I also have yet another pair of glasses (there was a time when I kept the opticians going singlehandedly with my eyes, so to speak) made for some inexplicable reason by the car maker Jaguar which are supposed to be used with my contact lenses when I read! I know, I know, it seems stupid to me too, but I bought into this ‘solution’ and I have, at last decided to put it to the test.
The conditions in my present school are, shall we say, less demanding than in my last and so I have decided to see if this compromise will work.
I will, of course forget my glasses, or forget to put my contact lenses in or a combination of both but I do have one factor working to ensure that I remember. I am beginning to develop those little indentations on either side of my nose where the kidney bean shaped piece of plastic holds the frame – and that is simply unacceptable.
So vanity is the driving force behind my experiment – and there have been worse motivations, so don’t sneer.
I await the panic which will accompany my now unaccustomed insertion of contact lenses in the dark.
It is a situation ripe for chaos – just the way to start a school day!
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