Today I celebrated my 9th birthday. I should have been very happy, because my mom and dad bought me some really nice new clothing and a new I Pad. But I wasn’t happy at all. The thing I wanted worse than anything else in the world was a pair of glasses to wear. My mom is extremely nearsighted, my granny is very nearsighted and my great grandmother also wears strong glasses for the correction of her myopia. And from pictures I have seen, my great, great grandmother was also very nearsighted. But here I was, over 3 years past the point where my mom got her first glasses and I had just gone for my yearly eye exam only to find out that my eyesight was still perfect. It just wasn’t fair.
When I was 3 or 4 and was able to realize that some people needed glasses I asked my mom if I would have to wear glasses when I was older and she told me that it was highly likely that I too would be very nearsighted because it seemed to run in her side of the family. I waited patiently for the time to come, and as I grew older and was able to access the internet on my own, I discovered all sorts of websites with information about myopia. What I read did seem to indicate that with so much myopia in my genetic background the probability of me developing a substantial degree of myopia was very high.
I also read a lot of stories and articles about people with very high myopia. As long as you could be corrected with glasses or contact lenses very high myopia could be bit of a problem, but generally it was nothing that ruined your life. And from other stories I read I discovered that girls with strong prescriptions were found to be very desirable to a large number of men. I was more than ready for my overdue ride up the staircase of myopia to begin.
I had read that myopia is often caused by a person reading at a very close near point distance. For the past 3 years, since I had turned 6, I had done just that. I read everything with my nose almost touching the pages of my books. But nothing happened. I also read that myopia is more prevalent in children who spend very little time outdoors. If my skin was any paler from never being exposed to the sun I would practically be considered an albino, so that hadn’t worked. The only thing that had been suggested that I hadn’t tried was to get myself a pair of glasses with a minus prescription and wear them all the time. From what I read a child my age could likely accommodate the full time wear of glasses with a prescription of up to -5D. There were no real rules about how fast the myopia would then develop, but most people were of the opinion that a person who did this would have gained about -3D of myopia within a year.
But that option was out of reach for me. I would never be able to wear glasses that my parents knew I did not require. The only way I could do it would be by wearing contact lenses. Even that posed a problem. First of all it was suggested that you should visit an optometrist so they could fit you with colored contacts, and then you would know your proper base curve and correct diameter for your eyes. I could never get that one past my parents.
My mom wore contact lenses a lot. I had read the numbers on her bottles so many times I knew them off by heart. Her right eye needed -20.00D for the power, and 8.7 for the base curve with a diameter of 14.2 and her left eye required -19.50 x 8.7 x 14.2. Mom had 30 day disposable lenses that came in vials and every month she threw out her old lenses and replaced them with new ones. I knew her old contacts would be of absolutely no use to me. I had tried her glasses on a number of times and all I could see was a massive blur. That’s how I knew her contacts would just give me the same blur. One day I went into the bathroom and discovered that mom’s old contacts had just been placed into the garbage bucket. They were still fresh and wet and had not dried out. I took them out and got a plastic disposable glass from the cupboard in the kitchen. Then I placed some of mom’s solution in the glass and dropped the contacts into the glass. I hid the glass in my room and then the next day I went to the drugstore and bought myself a package of 2 new contact lens cases and a new bottle of the same one step solution mom used. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I had an idea that I wanted to try.
The next morning I took the lens I had placed in the left side of the contact lens case, and I carefully inserted it into my eye. I had watched mom put in her contacts enough times I was pretty sure I could put the lens in and remove it easily. The lens went in with no problem. It was really weird wearing a contact lens that I could not see through. I am pretty sure that my left eye was wandering all around, because it could not see well enough to focus on anything. After an hour of wearing the extremely powerful contact lens I felt that I probably could wear the same size contacts that mom had, because it felt pretty comfortable sitting on my eye. I gave my eyes a bit of a rest, and then I tried the same contact lens in my right eye for another hour. It felt just as good on my right eye as it had on my left.
If it hadn’t been for the community mailboxes that were in our subdivision I would never have been able to take the next step forward. It was my responsibility to go to the mailbox every day and pick up the mail. An idea had been forming in my mind. I had found a place on the internet that would supply contact lenses without requiring a doctor’s prescription. I wrote a nice letter telling them I needed to order new contacts, but that I didn’t have a credit card. I had gone online and priced out the cost, and I was including a money order for a one year supply of 30 day disposable contacts including tax and shipping. I gave them my e mail address, and asked them to notify me when they were shipped.
They sent an e mail asking me for the date of my last eye exam and for confirmation that the order was correct. I made up a date that was midweek from a couple of weeks earlier and I confirmed that the order for the -5D lenses in a 8.7 x 14.2 size was correct and that I needed the same prescription in both eyes. A week later my new contact lenses were in our mailbox when I got the mail after school that night.
I hurried home with the packages of my contact lenses. I opened one box and placed a lens into my left eye. Things were very blurred and I wondered if I had made a mistake. But then I placed another lens into my right eye. Now both eyes had a blurred view of the world but I could sort of focus on objects and I was pretty sure the blur would clear up a bit. Part of me told myself that I really should have ordered -3D contacts, but I knew that while I could have done that and it would have been easier on me, this was the only possible route to my destination.
After a week I could see objects in the distance much better. But I still couldn’t read anything. Another week went by and by then I was discovering that I could read a bit better. By the time I had been wearing the -5D contacts full time for a month it was no problem at all to see near and far with the contacts in.
It was a bit of a problem for me to keep the fact that I was wearing contact lenses from my little brother and my baby sister. But I managed by getting up earlier than they did and putting in my lenses immediately. It also helped that Granny and Mom had bottles of contact lens solution in every bathroom of the house so I was able to use their solution and I not only didn’t have to buy any more of my own but also didn’t have to try to sneak a bottle with me into the bathroom.
After 10 months and a couple of weeks there were 2 weeks to go before it would be time to open my last 30 day pack of disposable lenses. I knew I had jump started my myopia by wearing the contacts. In the mornings before I put my lenses in the blur was intolerable. I was going to be going for my yearly eye examination very shortly, and I should really be going around without any correction, squinting and telling my parents and my grandmother that I couldn’t see a thing. But that meant that I would have to go without my contacts and would actually not be able to see much of anything. I could not procrastinate any longer though. I couldn’t wear my contacts into the doctor’s office and remove them just before the exam, even though I knew from what I read on the internet that once contacts were removed the doctor couldn’t tell you had been wearing them.
Since I had the last pack of disposables still unopened I decided I had better start telling people that I couldn’t see things. The first time I did that I was at the mall with Granny and we were in the food court for lunch. She asked me what I wanted and I scrunched up my eyes and squinted at the board. We were at Burger King, so I told Granny that I guessed I would just have a Big Mac. She told me that we were not at Mc Donald’s, so my only choice was a Whopper and then she asked me if I had not been able to see that. I told her I wasn’t and her response was that it was a good thing that I was going for my eye exam shortly because it looked like I needed glasses badly. That evening after Granny made us supper I went up to my room and took out my contacts to read for a while. I heard mom come home and I prepared for what I was pretty sure was coming next. Sure enough she called for me to come downstairs.
“Your Grandmother tells me that you couldn’t see the menu at the Burger King today.” Mom said.
“I suppose not.” I replied as sullenly as I could.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you were having problems seeing?” Mom asked.
“I didn’t want to get glasses.” I answered.
With that Mom asked me to read the calendar on the wall, and as I had to move closer and closer before I could pick out the numbers she pointed at she seemed to get a little more agitated every time I had to move up.
“I am going to call the doctor first thing tomorrow to see if he can get you in sooner than your appointment next week.” Mom said.
“You don’t have to do that. I am used to seeing like this and I can wait.” I replied.
“You can’t wait. Your vision is terrible and you need to get glasses immediately.” Mom retorted.
With that I knew I had better not put my lenses in the next morning. Sure enough, our doctor fit me in between a couple of other patients, and when he finished he told me what I already knew. I was quite nearsighted and needed glasses badly.
He didn’t tell me what the prescription I required was going to be. He had given me a choice between red and green, and since I had read that the red choice gave you a little stronger lens I chose red. I am pretty sure I couldn’t fool the machine but I did make sure that when the letters first became clear on the chart I would wait until he gave the machine a few more clicks and the letters started to get a bit fuzzy before I told him that it was perfect. The lady at the reception desk printed out my prescription for mom and she looked at it before she put it in her purse. I saw a frown cross her brow as she read the numbers, so I was pretty sure that I had accomplished my goal and had gotten a reasonably strong prescription.
“The doctor wants to see Brittany in 3 months. Would you care to make an appointment now?” asked the receptionist.
Mom said that would be a good idea, and the receptionist handed mom a card with my next appointment written on it. Then Mom hustled me out to the car and we drove to the one hour optical at the mall. I chose a frame that I liked, even though both Mom and the optician told me that my lenses would look fairly thick in that frame. But I didn’t care.
Finally I got to look at the prescription slip. My right eye needed -5.50D and my left eye required -5.25D. I wondered how I had managed that by wearing -5D contact lenses, but I wasn’t going to argue. I left the mall with my new glasses on my face and I was loving it. They had been correct, my lenses did look quite thick in my new glasses, but that was exactly what I wanted. Now all I was going to have to do would be to see if I could maintain the deterioration of my vision that I had started.
Three months later I was back for another eye exam. My mom had brought my sister, who was now 6 and would be starting school soon and my 8 year old brother along to have their eyes tested as well. I was able to get a small increase – according to the doctor I now needed -6.25 for each eye. So my tricks had worked. But the biggest shock to me was that 7 year old Kaitlin needed to wear glasses and she actually had worse eyes than I did. Her prescription was going to have to be -8D. Taylor didn’t need glasses though.
I was a bit upset that Kaitlin needed stronger glasses than I did. I was now more determined than ever to make my eyes worse than hers were. We both got our glasses at the one hour optical store again, and I had my new lenses put into my old frame. If I thought the lenses were thick before now they were really thick. Surprisingly, with the new prescription I found it a little hard to get used to them. After a couple of weeks I was seeing perfectly and I was back to reading everything within about 8 to 10 inches from my glasses. This time the eye doctor had suggested that I could go a year before I needed another exam, but Kaitlin had to go back in 3 months just like I had done.
I was surprised the day that Kaitlin went for her 3 month checkup. Mom came to school and got me out of class. She told me that I had to go back for another eye exam right away and as we drove over to the doctors office she told me that the one hour optical had mixed up our prescriptions. I had been wearing Kaitlin’s -8D prescription, and Kaitlin had been struggling to see through my -6.25D prescription for the past 3 months. When the doctor had checked Kaitlin’s eyes while she was wearing her glasses he discovered that she couldn’t see very well. He then started her with the same -8D prescription that was supposed to be the prescription in her glasses, and was surprised that she could see quite well. With that he checked the prescription in her glasses and found out that they were -6.25D. He realized what must have happened, and he and my mom decided that I should have my eyes checked to ensure that I was able to see through the -6.25D prescription before my mom went back to raise holy cane with the one hour optical store.
I was disappointed to think that I might be getting glasses with weaker lenses. I had quite enjoyed wearing my glasses and I liked my image as the girl with the thick glasses a lot. It turned out that when the doctor examined my eyes after only 3 months of wearing stronger lenses than I needed that my eyes had adapted perfectly to the new prescription and now I really needed to wear the -8D prescription I had in my glasses. I was really happy about this. It had bothered me that my little sister needed a stronger prescription than I needed and I was much happier to know that we were now wearing exactly the same prescription.
We went back to the one hour optical store and mom and the manager had quite a discussion while they made Kaitlin new lenses for her glasses for free. The manager apologized to me for the mistake his optician had made and mom got a store credit for new lenses for me the next time I needed stronger lenses.
It was kind of neat being able to switch glasses with my sister. Her glasses had a smaller eye size than mine had so her glasses didn’t look as strong on me as my own did. And when Kaitlin wore my glasses they looked really strong on her. But I guess they looked about the same way when they were on my face as well. My glasses had a flat front to the lenses, and the optician told me that it was to make my lenses thinner. When I asked why Kaitlin didn’t have the same flat fronts the lady told me that Kaitlin’s glasses were a much smaller eye size and that she wouldn’t need the extra thin lenses like I had or the flat fronts until her prescription needed to be stronger. I liked the flat fronts, the fact that my lenses stuck back behind the sides of my frame and I liked the power rings that I could see in my lenses when I turned my head a little bit sideways.
I kept up my practice of bringing my reading materials as close to my face as I could. And I read a lot of books over the next year. I was almost 12 when I discovered that all of a sudden my distance vision was a lot worse than I thought it was. I had gone through quite a growth spurt and I had read that when a myopic child went through a period of growth it was quite common to experience an increase in their myopia as well, because the eyeball will also grow longer. This had seemingly happened very suddenly. I had been noticing for a while that my eyesight had been getting a little bit worse and for a while I had compensated by pushing my glasses right tight against my nose. But they kept sliding down a little so I bent the tabs that went around the back of my ears on my earpieces a little tighter so my glasses stayed tight. But in only a couple of weeks I had gone from being able to see mostly OK to hardly being able to see anything. The doctor had told mom to make another appointment for me as soon as she noticed me squinting or if I started to complain. Mom hadn’t noticed me squinting yet, but I certainly started to complain.
Kaitlin, Taylor and I all ended up back at the eye doctor again. This time Taylor didn’t escape having to wear glasses. He was given a prescription of -1.75D, and mom was told to have him wear them whenever he needed to for distance. Kaitlin went in next and she came out with an increase to -9.50D. When I went in it seemed that I was in the chair the longest. The doctor tried lots of different lenses and then he asked me if I liked to wear my glasses as tight to my face as I had been wearing them. Of course I told him that I would rather have them pulled away from my nose a little more than they were now. So he put the machine back in front of my face and I am pretty sure he set my head back a little bit. The chart was now a little blurry again so he tried a couple more clicks of the lenses. Finally he asked me if that was enough, and I don’t know why I did it, but I asked him if he could make my lenses a little bit stronger. He did, and I was really surprised.
The one hour optical store couldn’t make my -11D lenses the same day but they would have them the following day. Because of that Mom let me get a new frame. Kaitlin got new lenses put in her old frame, and Taylor was able to get a frame and lenses special for his new glasses. The next night after school I went and picked up my new glasses all by myself. When the optician was fitting the frame to my face she asked me if I liked wearing my glasses a little loose, or if I would rather have them tight to the bridge of my nose, and I told her I wanted them as tight as possible. She fit them that way and I could tell that my new glasses were a bit stronger than I needed, but within a day they felt just right for my eyes.
I was pleased. Here I was, only 12 years old and I had a prescription of -11D for my glasses. My glasses were by far the thickest glasses of anyone in the whole school, including any of the teachers. I might have felt this because I wanted to feel it, but is seemed to me that everyone was envious of my glasses. Once I was at home though mom and gran had me beat by a long way, as mom, who hardly ever wore glasses, wore contacts that were very strong with their -20D prescription. Gran had glasses with little circles in the middle of the lenses, so her glasses were not even as thick as mine were. But the little circles attested to the fact that her glasses were very strong and special. I was going to wear the same type of myodisc glasses as gran did before I ended my quest for myopia.
I knew I had a pretty good start. I no longer felt that I needed to do anything further to increase my myopia other than reading up close and staying in the house rather than playing outdoors. Sure enough, my eyes continued to get worse and worse all by themselves and my glasses got stronger and stronger. My only goal was that I wanted to stay slightly ahead of Kaitlin with my prescription and as we grew into our teens there were a couple of times when I thought that Kaitlin had caught up to me. But I always made sure that Kaitlin went in before I did, and if it looked like she was getting a much stronger prescription I would tell the doctor that I was having a lot of trouble seeing at night. I managed to stay at least -1D above Kaitlin and by the time I was 18 my glasses prescription had reached a point where it matched my gran’s. At -23.50D myodiscs were the default choice for lenses. If a person wanted to have regular looking lenses in their glasses they needed to pay a lot more money to have the highest index lenses. I wanted the myodisc lenses and I was proud to be finally wearing them.
I had rejected the idea of wearing contact lenses every time the subject was brought up. I chose to wear glasses, and I had not had any problems needing, or wearing my strong glasses. I was reasonably attractive, and I always had a good selection of boys who wanted to go out with me. Even Kaitlin, who was 2 years younger than me had never had a problem attracting guys. After all, with contact lenses I might just as well not have gone to all the trouble to wear glasses. I would forever think of myself as just a girl and her myopia.
Specs4ever Aug 2014