It's a big and blurry world
I went to the eye doctor on Wednesday. Verdict: my eyes have gotten worse and I should get new glasses, but the change isn't enough to explain the headaches I've been having lately.
Along with giving me my new prescription, the eye doctor decided to mess with my mind. Admittedly that isn't hard to do, but still. He had me look at various objects around the room with my glasses on and with my glasses off and asked what I noticed other than the obvious fact that without my glasses everything was beyond blurry. I said that the objects appeared a bit bigger without my glasses on but that I've always just put that down to the blurriness making the edges indistinct and making me think things were bigger. He said the opposite is true. Because of how bad my eyes are, having my lenses far enough from my eyes to be in glasses sitting on my nose is causing a distortion in things and that with my glasses on I see the world about 11% smaller than it actually is. Seriously. My entire world view has just shifted because I now know that everything in the universe is 11% bigger than I think it is. How crazy is that? Not to mention, he was very precise. 11%. No round to about 10%. 11%.
The doctor's purpose in telling me this was to make a pitch for contacts. He said lots of people with eyes as bad as mine prefer contacts because getting the lens closer to the eye gets rid of that distorting effect and you see the world as it really is rather than this 11% smaller business. I've tried contacts twice and both times it sucked royally. Of course, the last time was probably 7 or 8 years ago and technology has improved, but I think I'm still going to hold off. Maybe after I get out of grad school and get a full time job with a regular salary, even if I don't have vision benefits, I'll think about it. Of course, today I went glasses shopping and that nearly made me reconsider. Apparently when my eyes got a little worse this time I crossed some magic threshold and now I can't get good prescription sunglasses. I spent three hours today shopping for glasses and many places simply don't make sunglasses as strong as I need them. The places that can do it can only do bare minimum, none of the special polycarb thinner lenses or anti-glare coatings or any of that, and it is still astronomically expensive. I ordered glasses and sunglasses today from two different places but I'm seriously considering returning the sunglasses. I've got 90 days to make up my mind. My sister is going to check someplace in Houston where I've gotten glasses before to see what they can do with my 'script. I've had really good luck with them having better options on my syper thick glasses, so hopefully they'll be able to do it and I can just keep using my old sunglasses until I go home since my eyes didn't change that much. Even if they can't do it, I might cancel the sunglasses order because it was so expensive for something that isn't the ideal and I really think I can keep using the old sunglasses since I don't need them for reading. Or maybe I'll just live with dorky clip-ons or something.
In the meantime, I'll be over in the corner staring at objects while lifting my glasses on and off to watch as the world magically shrinks and expands.
Along with giving me my new prescription, the eye doctor decided to mess with my mind. Admittedly that isn't hard to do, but still. He had me look at various objects around the room with my glasses on and with my glasses off and asked what I noticed other than the obvious fact that without my glasses everything was beyond blurry. I said that the objects appeared a bit bigger without my glasses on but that I've always just put that down to the blurriness making the edges indistinct and making me think things were bigger. He said the opposite is true. Because of how bad my eyes are, having my lenses far enough from my eyes to be in glasses sitting on my nose is causing a distortion in things and that with my glasses on I see the world about 11% smaller than it actually is. Seriously. My entire world view has just shifted because I now know that everything in the universe is 11% bigger than I think it is. How crazy is that? Not to mention, he was very precise. 11%. No round to about 10%. 11%.
The doctor's purpose in telling me this was to make a pitch for contacts. He said lots of people with eyes as bad as mine prefer contacts because getting the lens closer to the eye gets rid of that distorting effect and you see the world as it really is rather than this 11% smaller business. I've tried contacts twice and both times it sucked royally. Of course, the last time was probably 7 or 8 years ago and technology has improved, but I think I'm still going to hold off. Maybe after I get out of grad school and get a full time job with a regular salary, even if I don't have vision benefits, I'll think about it. Of course, today I went glasses shopping and that nearly made me reconsider. Apparently when my eyes got a little worse this time I crossed some magic threshold and now I can't get good prescription sunglasses. I spent three hours today shopping for glasses and many places simply don't make sunglasses as strong as I need them. The places that can do it can only do bare minimum, none of the special polycarb thinner lenses or anti-glare coatings or any of that, and it is still astronomically expensive. I ordered glasses and sunglasses today from two different places but I'm seriously considering returning the sunglasses. I've got 90 days to make up my mind. My sister is going to check someplace in Houston where I've gotten glasses before to see what they can do with my 'script. I've had really good luck with them having better options on my syper thick glasses, so hopefully they'll be able to do it and I can just keep using my old sunglasses until I go home since my eyes didn't change that much. Even if they can't do it, I might cancel the sunglasses order because it was so expensive for something that isn't the ideal and I really think I can keep using the old sunglasses since I don't need them for reading. Or maybe I'll just live with dorky clip-ons or something.
In the meantime, I'll be over in the corner staring at objects while lifting my glasses on and off to watch as the world magically shrinks and expands.
