I knew when I married my wife that since she was quite nearsighted the chances were good that any children we had would quite likely be nearsighted also. My mother had commented on that possibility before Janet and I married but she didn’t seem to be dead set against our marriage and I took that to mean that she would accept whatever came along as I knew she wanted grandbabies in the worst way. Janet miscarried when she was 4 months pregnant with what was to have been our first child. We had only been married a year when this happened and while it was a sad occasion there was nothing we could do about it. I didn’t mind when Janet had to get a new prescription for her glasses afterwards, as I quite like the looks of a nearsighted lady. Her eyesight was not good, and she was already quite dependent on her -14.50D glasses. An increase of -0.75D seemed terrible to her, but I barely noticed the little bit of extra thickness to the lenses in her new glasses. I was not unhappy about her needing stronger glasses and in fact I hoped that her prescription would increase even further with another couple of pregnancies. Two years later when Meghan was born Janet’s prescription jumped a whole -1.25D. Her new glasses were noticeably stronger and thicker, with what seemed to me to be a lot more cut in. By the time Aaron was born a year and a half later his birth added another -1.00D to her prescription and the new glasses were a whole lot thinner than her old ones as Janet had insisted on spending the extra money to get hi index lenses. She was staying home with both the kids until Aaron was in school full time and she felt that she would not be wearing contact lenses very often during this time so she wanted nicer looking glasses to wear. Meghan was almost 3 when I noticed that she seemed to have developed a bad habit of pulling everything really close to her face to look at it. She was just learning to color between the lines and along with her wanting to sit right in front of the television I started to suspect that Janet’s high myopia might just have manifested itself in our daughter. And it seemed to have come on quite rapidly, as I had been watching for the signs. Janet hadn’t yet caught on to Meghan’s possible shortsightedness, but after I mentioned it she agreed that we should have Meghan’s eyes tested immediately. It was hard to know just how quickly Meghan had developed her myopia. The doctor had asked us when we first noticed that she couldn’t see distance very well, and we sort of had to guess at maybe a month or so. She was definitely quite nearsighted as her first prescription was for -4D and even in the small frame we chose for her the lenses had a noticeable bit of power. I didn’t have a problem with Meghan needing glasses, and even though my mom said I told you this might happen she still loved Meghan as much as ever. I hoped that Aaron would not need glasses at as young an age, but was prepared for whatever the outcome was going to be. By the time Meghan was in first grade her prescription had jumped to -6D. Aaron, at 4 and a half had not shown any need for glasses yet, and I was fairly pleased about this. I loved seeing my 6 year old daughter squinting at things, and pushing up her glasses tighter on her face to see things clearer and while she didn’t seem to think that wearing glasses was any sort of problem the doctor had told us that a child who has a fairly high prescription from an early age would likely end up with quite a strong prescription. Janet kept saying that she hadn’t needed her glasses until she was 7 and her first prescription was weaker than Meghan’s. I think she felt worse about passing on her myopia to Meghan than I did. Janet’s prescription seemed to have stabilized after Aaron was born and she finished breastfeeding. It was a good thing it had, because her -17.50D glasses were pretty darned expensive with their 1.74 hi index plastic lenses. Since she was wearing glasses full time I had splurged and I bought her a second pair, as she really needed a backup pair in her current prescription. Once Aaron, who still had 20/20 vision without glasses, was in school full time Janet got herself new contact lenses and returned to the workforce. By this time Meghan was in grade 3 and her glasses had doubled in strength from her first pair. I thought she looked really cute wearing her new glasses, but it was obvious from the thickness of her new – 8D lenses that she was a very shortsighted young lady. Meghan was just a normal child who played with her friends outdoors after school when the weather was nice enough. She spent a fair amount of time watching television, she liked to color a lot and she did quite a bit of reading. Her eyesight was just bad enough that you never saw her without her glasses on her face unless she took them off and got me to clean them for her. I loved looking at my daughter’s cute little face without her glasses because her eyes didn’t even try to focus on anything. Once in a while I would discuss her eyesight with her, and she would take her glasses off to show me just how close she had to bring things to see them clearly. She needed to bring regular size print to between 6 and 8 inches from her face to be able to see all the letters really clearly. I thought that was a bit of an exaggeration, because her mom was sort of able to see within about 3 inches from her eyes and Janet had a -17.50D prescription. I looked into that a bit and I discovered that a nearsighted person’s focal length really did become much shorter very quickly. A person with a -5D prescription could only see normal reading size print with the material brought to about 8 inches from their eye. By the time they reached a -10D prescription they had to bring the same reading material up to around 4 inches from the eye. By the time they had a -20D prescription the table showed a focal length of 2 inches and if, heaven forbid, someone had a prescription of -40D their focal length was 1”. The table I found didn’t go on any further, but it appeared to me that as the prescription doubled the focal length was cut by 50% and that would indicate that a person with a prescription of -80D would only have a focal length of less than a half inch. The original table was in metric and I had to do a conversion, but this conversion meant that a person with the -80D prescription only had a focal length of 12.5mm. They would barely even be able to see as far as the lenses in their glasses. That didn’t sound right to me because I had read recently about a man who wore 108D glasses. Obviously there were differences between what happens in real life and paper tables. I certainly would never wish such a strong prescription on my daughter. I thought that she was helpless enough without her -8D glasses. Her mother didn’t like the fact that she wore such strong glasses, but since Janet didn’t seem to have any problems with her vision I felt that Meghan should be just fine as long as her prescription could be managed so that she didn’t progress too fast and too far. I did my best to keep Meghan from getting to close to her reading material and she seemed to follow my advice. I had explained my reasoning to her and she seemed to understand when I told her that doing near point work while looking through her full prescription lenses might accelerate her prescription increases. I also suggested that if she wanted to read for a long time she would be doing her eyes a favor if she used her old -6D glasses while she read, and I saw her doing this frequently. Meghan was a smart kid and I know she realized that she was going to have to make her eyes last a long time. Unfortunately Meghan’s increases did continue. By the time Meghan was 14 she was wearing glasses with a prescription of -13.50D x -1.00 x 102 for her right lens and her left lens was -13.50D x -0.50 x 45. She looked really cute in her new glasses as she had gone against the big frames trend and selected a wire framed pair that was black on the outside, white on the inside and had a wide temple with an expanded metal see through look. Meghan really liked them because you really couldn’t see the thickness of her lenses through the expanded metal. The 1.67 hi index lenses didn’t look terribly thick to me, as her left lens was 10mm and her right lens was 9mm from the front of the lens to the rear and there was only 7 mm showing that was pretty much hidden by the wide expanded metal temple. She had quite a large increase in her prescription, but her doctor felt that wearing her old glasses for reading had done a pretty good job of slowing down her increases. He was quite pleased that her spherical prescription was now lower than her age and he told us that when a young lady has a stronger spherical prescription than her age she is likely to keep increasing rapidly until she reaches around the age of 25. Meghan understood exactly what he was telling us because one of her friends who was also in grade 9 had started out wearing glasses in grade 4 and in only 5 years she had really increased her prescription rapidly so that she now had a prescription of -14.50D. Meghan hadn’t minded seeing her classmate’s prescription increase so rapidly because now Meghan was no longer the girl in her class with the strongest looking glasses. Meghan had been asking her mother and me about getting contact lenses. I told her I was not against her wearing contacts, but that one of the things I had noticed was that people who wore contacts often had their eyesight get even worse by them wearing contacts. I explained to her my thoughts that since contacts correct your eyesight for distance, by wearing contacts your eyes are always reading through much stronger lenses than you need to read with. But if you wear glasses, when you look down to read something often your glasses slip away from the bridge of your nose and this reduces the effective power of the lenses in the glasses. I told Meghan I would buy her contacts but it would be best if she wore them for special occasions instead of wearing them all of the time. Naturally, she still wanted contacts, and I did buy them for her. She did listen to my suggestion though, as she generally wore the contacts in the evening when she was going out with her boyfriend. She still wore her glasses to school almost every day, and she still continued wearing her old, weaker glasses when she was doing a lot of reading. I had also suggested that she should take a lot of breaks from her reading and should focus her vision on other things because fixating your vision at a certain focal point also would tend to keep your ciliary muscles in tension. A year later, her classmate that had surpassed Meghan as having the strongest glasses had another eye exam. She had worn contact lenses for the entire time during the past year, and apparently had to go back to have her contacts and glasses updated with a new prescription. Her eyes had continued to deteriorate, and Meghan told me she needed her contact lens prescription increased by -2D, and her glasses increased in power accordingly. Megan told me that her parents would not buy her both new contacts and new glasses with the expensive hi index lenses so she had just gotten regular lenses in her glasses and Meghan was amazed at how much thicker her glasses were now. This showed Meghan that her dad, although unable to show her written proof behind his theories, was likely telling her the truth and she continued being very good about following the steps that we had already discussed. By the time Meghan graduated from university at the age of 22, her prescription had increased gradually through the years to the point that it was now right at -20.00 x -1.25 x 105 for her right eye, and her left eye was -20.00 x -0.75 x 40. This, to me, was not that bad. Since she was 14 her prescription had only gone up -6.50D in each eye. This was during the time of her life when the visual demands on her were likely the greatest they would ever be. Yes, her prescription was quite strong, however her visual acuity was right around 20/30 with glasses and 20/20 when she was wearing contact lenses. She saw a specialist every 6 months just for a comprehensive check of her retina’s and so far she had avoided any retinal problems. She had gotten a job as a geologist in the oil industry, and her new glasses that she wore most of the time were made with a high index lens that I think is called 1.74 index. When she was at work she had to wear safety glasses all the time, and her black framed safety glasses looked really thick compared to the cat’s eye tortoiseshell ones. She could have worn contacts under normal safety glasses, but she felt that this was a waste of contacts. Meghan thought that it was terribly unfair that her brother Aaron had gone through life to this point without needing glasses. I had explained to her that with one parent who was nearsighted the chances were at least 50/50 that both children would need glasses. Fortunately for Aaron he had not needed them, and Meghan had gotten all, and more of her mother’s myopia. As much as I enjoy looking at attractive – and even not so attractive - ladies that wear strong glasses I was pleased that I had the foresight to investigate the causes and progression of myopia. I felt that I had prevented my daughter from reaching a point where her myopia was so strong that it could not be corrected enough to give her satisfactory vision throughout the rest of her life. I had satisfied my wishes by marrying a very nearsighted lady, but even though I had considered it in advance I had not wished for my daughter to inherit her mother’s myopia. Specs4ever Nov, 2017