I first got contact lenses when I was around 14 years old. I was horribly myopic and needed Coke-bottle glasses that were quite difficult to see through. My parents were very much against my getting contacts, even though the ophthalmologist had recommended them. He’d explained that eyeglasses would never be able to adequately correct my vision.
Unsurprisingly, I was awful at sports. Like a lot of children with impaired vision, I preferred to sit by myself and read.
My parents offered lots of justifications for their opposition: I’d probably lose them and they were very expensive (they were custom-made hard lenses — soft contacts wouldn’t happen for a few years yet). I’d probably get eye infections because I wouldn’t follow the hygiene instructions. I think the real reason, though, was that they couldn’t really afford them but made a big show of being rich to all their friends and neighbors.
They eventually relented and my life improved dramatically. I never lost the lenses or got an eye infection. I wore them constantly except at night until I was about to start medical school twenty years later. I lost my lenses (and my car keys) when I wiped out while surfing, and I wasn’t able to find someone that could fit them properly. I knew that med school would involve a lot of long days (how long, I couldn’t have imagined) and made the probably good decision to forego lenses.
During residency, I was doing an ophthalmology rotation when a contact lens technician looked in my eyes with a slit lamp, and asked me if I’d like to be an eye model. He said he knew why nobody could fit lenses properly, and he wanted to use my eyes to teach people about folks with oddly-shaped corneas. I’d get a free pair of lenses out of it, plus I could add “eye model” to my CV. The new lenses worked great.
As happens to many people with severe myopia, I started having retina problems in my 50’s. I had two tears and a detachment, and had a total of nine eye surgeries. I do not recommend it, but a consequence was I had 20:20 vision when it was all over. Better vision than I’d had since third grade. The only problem is that I was farsighted, and needed reading glasses. No big deal, but then my contact lens optometrist suggested I try wearing a single lens that would correct for reading in my right eye, and leave the left for distance. I didn’t think it would work, but it was actually wonderful. So I continued to wear a contact lens until last year.
Last year, after living on the island for a while, I started noticing that I got by pretty well without lenses. Getting them fitted here was challenging and expensive, and I was getting tired of the ritual and expense of managing them.
Has my vision improved with my less-stressful lifestyle? Living in a place where I often look out to the ocean as well as to a book or screen? Or is it just that — no longer practicing medicine — I don’t have to constantly re-focus between papers and people? I’m not sure, but I haven’t had lenses for months. I carry reading glasses, and wear them occasionally when I need to do close work, but generally I can see my phone and my computer screen and books and HA’s beautiful face perfectly well without them.
—2p