I had just turned 10 in April the year I was in grade 5 at Reid Elementary when I started to notice something funny. Not funny ha ha, but funny strange. In the morning when I first woke up I could see the face of my favorite singer on the poster of him that hung on the other wall of my bedroom quite clearly. Then, when I came home from school in the late afternoon if I plopped down on my bed and looked at the poster it was all blurry. I could no longer make out his features unless I got up and moved closer to the poster. I knew that there was something that wasn’t quite right about this but I didn’t want to say anything to my parents. We still had another month to go before school was out for the summer when I noticed that now I couldn’t even see his face on the poster clearly first thing in the morning. I mentioned this to a couple of girlfriends at school and Marsha told me that I was likely getting a little bit nearsighted just like her older sister. I knew Marsha’s older sister Grace had gotten glasses recently, but I had not known what was wrong with her eyes to make her need them. Now I knew, but I really didn’t like the idea that I might have to wear glasses. I had nothing against glasses – I just didn’t want to have to wear them myself. By the time June came around and we were out of school for the summer I knew I was really getting quite nearsighted. Things that were much more than a couple of feet in front of me looked kinda fuzzy until I got up closer. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I wasn’t going to say anything to my parents yet. It probably wasn’t a good idea for me not to tell my parents because I had to go around that whole summer unable to see much of anything. Marsha was quite upset with me for not having found the courage to tell my parents that I was likely a little nearsighted. One day I was over at Marsha’s house and Marsha told Grace that I probably needed glasses. Grace was very nice, and she let me put her glasses on. They didn’t really help much. Yes, I could see things a little bit further away than I could without them, but things were still pretty blurry. I thought that this meant that glasses wouldn’t help me, but Grace told me that this likely meant that my eyes were worse than hers were and I probably needed stronger glasses than the ones she wore. I was trying to find the nerve to tell my mom that my eyes had gone all funny before school started in September but luckily I overheard mom and dad talking about my cousin Jake. “Beverly called me today. She took Jake in for an eye exam, even though Jake seemed to be able to see all right. The doctor found out that he had a problem with his eyes not converging on the same spot, so he needs glasses.” Mom said. “Maybe you should take Courtney in to see an eye doctor. I have noticed her squinting at things a lot this summer.” Dad replied. “I have noticed that once in a while myself. Maybe I will make an appointment for both Courtney and Danny.” Mom answered. After I heard that I knew I would be having my eyes examined. Part of me was a little scared by the idea that I would be wearing glasses, but another part of me wanted to be able to see much better again. It wasn’t any fun looking at things that were blurred and trying to decipher what they were. And I really couldn’t see street signs or anything like that anymore. It took a week before we were able to have our appointment. My younger brother Danny went in first. Danny did not need glasses, even though I had hoped that he would and that way it wouldn’t seem nearly as bad when I had to get them. Then I went in to see the doctor. He put this big machine thing in front of my face and then he asked me what I could see. At first I told him I couldn’t see anything, and I heard the machine click a few times. Then finally I could make out most of the letters. He did a few more clicks and after that the letters were all nice and clear. He would do a click, and then ask me which was better, this or that as he did another click. I was almost getting dizzy when finally he put a red lens in front of me and then a green lens. I was getting pretty tired of all this and while I wasn’t really sure which was better I like red better than green so I told him the red was better. “Well Courtney, you are actually quite nearsighted. I think you will be very happy when you get your new glasses.” The doctor said. We went out to the reception area and the doctor talked to my mom. I could overhear everything he was saying, although I didn’t really understand what it meant. “I find that while Courtney’s eyes are healthy she has become quite nearsighted and she needs what I generally would consider a pretty strong prescription for someone who has never worn glasses before. The prescription she needs to bring her to 20/20 is much stronger than what I find that most first time glasses wearers need. She needs between -3.25D and -3.50D to bring her back to 20/20. I have prescribed her -3.50D because that is what she seemed to feel the most comfortable with.” He said. Mom asked a few questions, which he answered. He did ask mom how long it had been since she had noticed me squinting at things, and mom told him only a month or so. He had already asked me when I had first noticed that my eyes were not as good as they had been, and I told him that it had been back in April. The only thing that worried me was when he told mom that my myopia seemed to have come on quite rapidly and it was possible that I would need an even stronger prescription within the next 6 months to a year. If mom noticed that I was having trouble seeing things she should bring me back immediately for another exam. Then we went to the one hour optical store and I got my first pair of glasses. These glasses were great. The minute I put them on I loved the fact that I could see again. It was amazing what I had been missing. The only thing I didn’t like was that after wearing these glasses for a few days it seemed that they were ruining my eyes. Now when I tried to take them off I really couldn’t see anything without them. The glasses were now the first thing I put on every morning and the last thing I took off at night. When I went over to Marsha’s after I got my glasses her sister Grace wanted to try my glasses on. She told me that if she really forced her eyes to see through my lenses she could, but she said that my eyes were a lot worse than hers were and it was no wonder that her glasses didn’t help me much. By the time Christmas break came around mom had decided that another visit to the eye doctor was necessary for me. I didn’t think I was seeing all that badly, but Miss Pidgeon, my teacher, had sent a note home telling mom that she had noticed I was having trouble reading the whiteboard in class and she had moved me to the front row. Mom and dad had apparently also noticed me squinting a lot at things. I was driven to my appointment by my mom, who dropped me off and told me she would be back in an hour as she had to pick up a present for Danny. “Í am a little surprised to see you back so soon Courtney. I didn’t expect you would be in until at least Easter.” Dr. Little said. “Everyone says I am not seeing as well as I should be Doctor.” I replied. ‘I am sure that we can fix that Courtney. Have you had any problems wearing your glasses?” Dr. Little asked. “It took a while for me to get used to them Doctor. But I like the fact that I can see so much better wearing them so I guess they are all right.” I replied. Dr. Little did the same old clicking of the lenses in the machine until I could see the letters on the wall clearly. Then he did the normal which is better routine. By now I was an old hand at this stuff and I found it easier than I had the first time. Finally he stopped and removed the machine from in front of my face before he handed me back my glasses. “You definitely need to have an increase in your prescription young lady. Is your mom with you?” Dr. Little asked. “She will be back to pick me up, but she isn’t here now.” I answered. “You are going to have to make the decision then Courtney. You could probably get away with a -1.00D increase in your prescription to bring you up to 20/30. But for some reason your eyes got this much worse in only 4 months. I am going to suggest to you that it might be a better idea to increase your prescription by -1.50D so that you do not have to come back quite so soon. I don’t normally do this, but you seem to be getting very nearsighted quite rapidly. I tested you with the -1.50D increase, and you could again see 20/20 with that correction. I would discuss this with your mom, but since she isn’t here you are going to have to make the decision.” Dr. Little said. “What would you do if I were your daughter Dr. Little?” I asked. “I would likely give her the -1.50D increase.” Dr. Little said. “I guess that will work for me then.” I replied. I left the examining room with a slip of paper in my hand. On the paper it said OD - 5.00 x -0.50 x 90 and OS – 5.00 x -0.50 x 85. Both eyes were exactly the same except for the last number. I sat in the waiting room for about 15 minutes before mom came back to get me, and I showed her the slip of paper. We went down to the car and mom drove to the one hour optical store again. Mom wanted to have new lenses put in my old frames, but they had a sale on and a new pair of frames and lenses was a little cheaper than just buying new lenses so I got to choose another frame. When we left the store I had my new glasses on and things definitely looked a lot sharper. After getting my new glasses it seemed to be a lot harder to do anything without them. I had been used to wearing my other glasses all the time, but I sometimes would take them off to read. Now I had to bring the book uncomfortably close to my eyes to read, and I started to just leave my glasses on for everything. I didn’t really think a lot about the fact that I was unable to see much of anything without glasses. I just wore them and looked at the world through what anyone else who tried my glasses on told me were fairly strong lenses. I was still sitting in the front row in my class, so I guess that is why I didn’t really notice that my eyes were getting worse and worse. By Easter I could barely read what the teacher was writing on the board. I knew that I didn’t want to go on this way, so I told mom and dad that everything was getting all blurry again and they made another appointment with Dr Little. I came out of the examination room with another slip in my hand for an even bigger increase this time. Mom had stayed in the waiting room and she and Dr. Little talked for what seemed to be quite a while about my eyes and what was wrong with them. The girls at the optical store were surprised to see me back so soon, but not as surprised as Dr. Little had been. This time my new prescription was going to be – 7.50D x -075 x 90 for both eyes with a +2.50 add. When I got my new glasses I had this stupid little line near the bottom of my lenses and I was supposed to look through the section under the line whenever I was reading. And if I was at home reading a book I was supposed to change back to my old glasses. Mom told me that this was to try to help prevent my eyes from getting a whole lot worse. I didn’t want my eyesight to get any worse, so I decided I would do what I was asked to do, even though it was a real pain to look through the reading segments. I couldn’t see much of a difference when I looked through the top of the lenses at what I was reading. Maybe the writing looked a little bigger, but it certainly wasn’t any clearer. Apparently Dr. Little and my mom had decided that since my eyes had gotten so much worse in a much short time frame than was normal for my age I should see a pediatric ophthalmologist. It took quite a while before I could get an appointment and finally in June, just before school let out for the year, mom and I drove downtown to Children’s Hospital, We went to the pediatric ophthalmology department and we sat in the waiting room until I could get in to see Dr. Edward Stone. Dr. Stone was a really nice man and he and his nurse checked my eyes with all sorts of machines. At the end of all the testing I had to sit in front of the same machine that my other eye doctor had used and Dr. Stone changed a lot of lenses around in front of my eyes. I knew that the lenses that he had used that allowed me to see all the letters on the eye chart were stronger than the ones that already were in my glasses so I figured that I needed stronger lenses once again. I was correct. After he finished with me Dr. Stone, mom and I all sat in his office while Dr, Stone discussed his findings with us. From what I could understand my eyes had gotten even worse since Dr. Little had prescribed the bifocal lenses for me. And the bifocals were supposed to prevent that from happening. Dr. Stone asked me if I liked reading with the bifocals, and I told him I hated it. I said that I could see just fine up close through the regular part of my glasses. “Courtney has gone from needing a very mild prescription a year ago to now being a high myope who requires an exceptionally strong prescription for her age. I have seen this happen with a few other children her age so it is not really that unusual. However it is something I need to keep a close eye on so we will bring Courtney back in for a checkup every three months. Dr. Little was correct in his idea to try Courtney with bifocals, but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference. I have checked Courtney’s reading vision with her full distance prescription and she has very good accommodation. I am afraid if she gets too accustomed to the bifocal segment for reading her accommodation will diminish to a point where she will really need bifocals much sooner than she should. I would like to just give her the full prescription she requires. But I would also like to see Courtney wearing a pair of glasses with a little bit lower prescription whenever she is doing a lot of close work and this means that you will need to buy Courtney a second pair of glasses this time because her old bifocals will be too awkward for her to use to read. If we do it this way, if she does need another prescription change down the road she will probably be able to use her old distance glasses. Dr. Little was doing what he thought was correct, so I hope that it doesn’t create a real hardship for you to buy 2 pairs of glasses.” Dr. Stone said. “How much worse will Courtney’s eyesight get Dr. Stone.?” Mom asked. “That is something no one is able to tell. She seems to be going against the norm right now with having had 4 large increases in a bit over a year. Everything looks healthy inside her eyes, and the reason for her myopia is all what we call axial myopia. That means that her eyeballs have grown longer front to back than they should have. I wish I could tell you that this will stop, and I wish I could give you a reason for this, but I honestly can’t. I can tell you from what has transpired so far there is a real possibility that Courtney will end up with an extremely strong prescription by the time she is a teenager. We will then have to keep a close eye on her progression to ensure that she does not have a retinal detachment.” Dr. Stone answered. Mom and I went to the one hour optical store we had used before. My new prescription was -9.25 x -0.75 x 90 for each eye. And I now needed a second pair of glasses that were -8.00 x -0.75 x 90 for each eye. Mom bought me new frames, but to save a bit of money she had the optician put my reading prescription in my old frames. I was happy to be rid of the bifocal segments, but I wasn’t happy that my glasses needed to be thicker already. I had just gotten used to looking at myself in the mirror wearing my bifocals. The girl at the optical store had vetoed most of my frame choices once she found out that mom only wanted to pay for regular plastic lenses because my eyes were getting worse and worse as rapidly as they were. I did end up with a frame that was a little larger than she wanted me to choose, but I think she finally decided that she had wasted enough of her time on me and she just wanted to get me out of the store with my new glasses. And when the new glasses were ready they really did look to be quite thick, but I had to wear them because I had chosen to take them no matter how thick they were. I think the words she used were: “If you don’t like them there will be no refunds because I have warned you that you should choose a smaller frame.” My wearing the second pair of glasses when I was reading and doing other close work was likely the reason why my eyes didn’t get any worse for the next year. I was happy about this because my glasses were already thicker than anyone else I knew. But I didn’t have a choice. I had to wear them because if I tried to take them off everything was a huge blur. I managed to go almost 2 years before I started to notice that my eyesight was getting worse. And this time when I went for my eye exam my increase in my prescription was only -0.75D for each eye. The lenses in my new glasses didn’t really look any thicker at all, but the front of my new lenses was completely flat. I didn’t even have to get new reading glasses because Dr. Stone told me I could still wear my old ones for reading. I was now almost 13, and my breasts seemed to be getting bigger and my body was filling out. I now even had a couple of boys hanging around me. I had been a little worried that my glasses, which were thicker than any of the other girls my age, would cause boys to stay away from me, but I was able to see that this was not going to be the case, and I was pleased about that. Since I had gone almost 2 years without needing new glasses Mom had allowed me to get thinner, more expensive lenses in my new frames, and my now -10D prescription looked to be thinner and much nicer than my other glasses had looked. I wasn’t thrilled with the fact that I was almost blind without my glasses, but none of my friends ever teased me or said much about my strong glasses. A year later, shortly after my 14th birthday, I knew I was going to need stronger glasses. Part of me didn’t want to tell my parents, because I was afraid if I had to get new glasses so soon they would not want to buy me the thinner lenses. I was worried that unless I got the thinner lenses my new glasses would be so thick they would look really thick and strong. The summer before I got my first glasses had been awful for me as I had a terrible time seeing things, so with that in my memory I finally told my Mom that I thought I needed new glasses. She called the hospital, and got me another appointment with Dr. Stone, as I was now in a group study on pediatric high myopia, and I would have my progression followed by Dr. Stone until I was 18. As I had suspected, my eyes had gotten a lot worse. My new prescription was -11.50D in both eyes, and my astigmatism had increased. I now had -1.25D x 90 in my right eye and -1.00D x 85 in my left. I just knew that my new glasses would look horribly thick, but I also realized that I had no choice as I was going to have to wear them in order to be able to see much of anything. There was an optical store at the hospital, and Dr. Stone had suggested that we could ask for a price for my new glasses there. I was now going to be able to wear my old glasses any time I was doing a lot of reading or a lot of schoolwork, so this time my parents were only going to have to buy me one new pair. I was dreading that new pair right up until I heard the optician say that I needed to have the hi index lenses because they would no longer make my prescription in the cheaper ordinary plastic. I guess the price at the hospital optical was within reason, because mom agreed to buy my new glasses there. My last pair of glasses were the strongest that they could make in one hour and I knew it was going to take a while for these glasses to be ready. It was about a week and a half before the hospital optical store phoned to tell me my new glasses were in. I was pretty apprehensive about getting them, because I just knew they would look thicker. When I saw the girl pull the glasses out of the case I could tell immediately that they were definitely thicker. But when she put them on my face and everything jumped into clear focus again I knew that it didn’t matter that they were thicker. I needed them badly, so this is what I was going to have to wear. I was seriously blind without my glasses now and I was very worried about how bad my eyes would eventually become. A year later my eyes had gotten another -2D worse so my new glasses had to be -13.50 x -1.25 x 90 and -13.50 x -1.00 x 85. I was already the girl with the thickest glasses in the whole school and my new glasses made sure that no one else could possibly take that title away from me. I dreaded what my next increase would bring but I had already been conditioned to believe that my eyes were still going to get worse and my glasses would have to be a lot stronger before I reached the age of 25 and my eyes supposedly stopped deteriorating. That was still another ten years away, and if my eyes got worse at the rate of -2D a year like my last increase I might need a prescription of -33D. Even at the pediatric eye clinic there was no one there that I had met yet who had a prescription over -30D. I was rather relieved the following year. I had to get my eyes checked as part of the study anyway, but I also wanted to have them checked so I could get my beginner driver’s license. Dr. Stone found that my eyes had only gotten -1.00D worse and that was good news to me. The next year, when I was 17, I wanted to get contact lenses, but the doctor told me that he personally wouldn’t recommend it. His theory was that by wearing my distance glasses most of the time, with weaker glasses when I was reading, my eyesight had deteriorated at a slower rate than if I wore contact lenses. Apparently when a person wears contact lenses all of the time they are looking through the full power of the contact lenses when they read, and that might cause their eyesight to deteriorate faster. Even though my glasses were still the strongest ones in my whole school – actually in my whole universe, I took the doctor’s advice and I did not get contacts. The next year I graduated from Senior High and was heading off to College. And I was really happy. My eyes had not deteriorated at all that year. I could wear my same glasses; at least for my first year in College. Just before my 18th birthday I had to go back to see Dr. Stone for a final evaluation of my eyesight. Once I had my 18th birthday I was no longer going to be in the pediatric myopia study. I had figured I was seeing just fine, but the good doctor decided I needed a bit of an increase before he let me loose into the adult world, and my new prescription was going to be -15.50 – with the same old astigmatism. As the next few years slid by in a blur of school and dating and all sorts of things I had a few more increases, and by the time I reached my 25th birthday my eyes were seeing the world through glasses that had a prescription of -22D and had what they called blended myodisc lenses. I didn’t really notice much of a difference between what I had been seeing back when I was 15 and what I could see now. Apparently my visual acuity was closer to 20/30 than it was to 20/20, but I was so used to it that I really didn’t notice, nor did I care. As long as I could still see I was happy. And I had gotten contact lenses, which I wore sparingly. I talked my dad into buying them for me for my wedding, and I wear them anytime my husband and I go out to a special event. He tells me he finds me just as attractive wearing my glasses, but I feel better about myself when I wear contacts. Specs4ever July 2018
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