“Your cataracts have reached the point where they are affecting your vision and most likely your daily life Mrs. Jimson. At this point your insurance company will pay to have them removed. I am thinking that with your strong prescription we might be able to remove your lenses and you will then have a natural prescription of no more than around -3D.” Dr. Cole said.
“I don’t know Doctor. Would it be possible to give me the exact same prescription I already have? I have worn thick glasses since I was a little girl and I just don’t know if I could adjust to not wearing them.” Miranda replied.
Doctor Cole seemed a little surprised at this. But since the request came from his patient he had to go along with her wishes.
“But this is a perfect opportunity for you to have your corrected eyesight improved tremendously at no cost. I can do what you are requesting, but I just don’t understand why you would not want to have much better eyesight. Please think it over Mrs. Jimson.” Dr. Cole responded.
“If you have a few minutes Doctor possibly I can help explain my wife’s decision to you.” I spoke up.
“I don’t have a lot of time before my next appointment, but if you can do it in 10 minutes or less go ahead.” Dr. Cole said.
So I went ahead as best I could. I didn’t really expect him to understand, but I felt that he deserved an explanation.
“When my wife and I first met it was 45 years ago. I was attracted to her because of her strong glasses, which were around -12D at the time. She was 20 years old and was going to teacher’s college and I was in my final year at the university taking a business course. We both came from the same area but had never met before. Miranda’s plans were to return to the small city where she grew up and teach in one of the schools there. I was planning to return to the small town 16 miles away and work for my father, who was a new car dealer in town.” I told him.
“I had always been attracted to women who wore glasses. I don’t know why this was, because there certainly weren’t any ladies in my immediate family who wore glasses. I had gone out with a couple of girls who were glasses wearers, but compared to Miranda’s lenses their lenses were paper thin. I loved how Miranda looked wearing her cats eye glasses with the flat fronted lenses. Fortunately I made no bones about telling her how much I liked her appearance wearing glasses and soon she realized that while I loved her for herself, her glasses were the icing on the cake. And, Miranda is still a very attractive woman, so I think you can imagine how she looked when we married when she was 21.” I continued.
“When I asked Miranda to marry me I knew that there were some ladies who were wearing contact lenses, which were a fairly recent development. Miranda had even spoken to her eye doctor at the time about being fitted for a pair. But when I asked her to marry me I told her how much I liked her wearing glasses and I asked her if she would please respect my wishes and wear glasses for me. She agreed to marry me, and to wear glasses for me for the rest of our life. Because of this we have had a very stable marriage for the past 44 years.” I finished
“I haven’t heard a story like that before, but it sort of explains your request. I can, and will, do what you folks want me to do. But I must ask you to think it over and be sure that this really is what you want. There have been so many advancements in replacement lenses that we could actually eliminate your need for anything but reading glasses. I do need to get on to my next patient now but I would like you to think it over carefully and set up one more appointment for me to examine your eyes and determine what lens I need to order.” Dr. Cole said.
Miranda and I left the doctor’s office and I drove home. Miranda did drive, and she still had her driver’s license but since her cataracts had gotten worse over the last couple of months she had parked her car and I drove her anywhere she needed to go.
That evening as we sat in the living room we reminisced about our life. When my mother had met Miranda for the first time she was dead set against me marrying a girl with such bad eyes. I had originally thought about having Miranda try to wear contacts until after our wedding, but after we discussed that we decided that we might as well get the battle over with right away.
When I first met Miranda she was quite shy. But after I started to pay her some attention, and we went out together a few times her shyness seemed to disappear. And after I told her that I was attracted to her because I liked her wearing glasses she seemed to come out of her shell.
Miranda’s eyesight really never caused us any problems. We had 4 children - a boy and 3 girls. Our middle daughter Gail inherited her mom’s high myopia and although, like my mother had warned me, our other three all were myopic and wore glasses, only Gail had a seriously strong prescription like her mom.
Miranda had just gotten new glasses for our wedding in the spring of 1970. Her optician had suggested a silver oval wire frame that had a fairly small lens size so her new -13D prescription didn’t look to be extremely thick, even with the CR39 plastic lenses that were used then. We had rented a house that was within walking distance of the school where Miranda was teaching grade 4, and even though we could have had a new car from Dad’s inventory for Miranda to drive we didn’t need one. I was driving the 18 miles a day each way to the dealership so I was putting plenty of miles on one of the new cars every year. Everything was working out really well and I never tired of making love to my wife, although she refused to wear glasses while we were having sex. Since she couldn’t see past the end of her nose without them she did wear them enough to satisfy me though.
Every couple of years Miranda would require a slight increase in her prescription, so this would mean new glasses. Her old optometrist had retired and I liked her new one because he seemed to be very thorough and he let me come into the examination room with Miranda. I think I also liked him because I am pretty sure that he gave Miranda a slightly stronger script every time we went to see him. Her increases were fairly slight, and she had never complained that she wasn’t seeing well when we went in for her exam every two years, but she always came out with a new prescription that was -0.50D higher than her last one. Maybe she really had needed the slight increase though because she always seemed to feel that she could see a lot better with her new glasses. Of course this meant that we had to get her new glasses every two years and I didn’t complain about that.
Her glasses that were -13.50D were an unremarkable pair that was a brown oval plastic frame with a very small eye size. They excited me because they were new, and changed her appearance a lot. But a couple of years later the lens size of glasses had gotten a lot bigger. Her new glasses in 1975 were a pair of Dior drop temple plastic frames with a large eye size and her new -14D prescription looked massively thick in that frame. The lenses stuck out behind the frame by at least a half inch and I loved them. Sadly though, Miranda didn’t care for them. I thought it was pretty cool that her lenses were so thick that the temples wouldn’t even fold closed. It was soon after she got these glasses that Miranda became pregnant with Jason our son and I am pretty sure that it was the glasses that were partially responsible for the pregnancy.
Jason was a bit over a year and a half when Miranda needed her next eye exam. This time her glasses were -14.50D and since the lens sizes were still just as large her optician suggested that Miranda would either need a lens called a myodisc, or else she would need a lens type called biconcave. I had never seen a myodisc lens, so I was excited when she chose this type and I loved her new plastic framed drop temple glasses.
Soon after that Miranda became pregnant with Diane. When the time came for her next eye exam I had seen a lot of women wearing drop temple rimless glasses with beveled edges and I thought these glasses looked fantastic. When I suggested to Miranda’s optician that we could choose this type of frame and have Miranda’s myodisc lenses done with the facetted edges she almost had a fit telling us that it couldn’t be done. But she checked around and she finally found a company that would do exactly what we wanted. These drop temple facetted rimless myodiscs were probably the pair of glasses that I liked the very best from all the glasses Miranda ever wore. She looked really gorgeous wearing them, although she was pregnant again with Gail.
The same style of glasses were still available in 1980 when it was time for her next eye exam so we got her the exact same frame again and had her lenses updated to her now -15.50D prescription. That was the year our third daughter Lynn was born so Miranda was more than a little busy looking after 4 kids. Although by now Jason was 6 and in school and Diane was only a year away from starting school herself. Miranda had taken a leave of absence from her job and we had decided that she would not return to teaching until after Lynn was in school full time.
The next time Miranda was scheduled for an eye exam was just before Gail turned 4. I had noticed that Gail seemed to be bringing everything pretty close to her face to see, so I suggested that Gail might benefit from having her eyes checked at the same time. Miranda had increased her usual -0.50D and now her new glasses were going to have special lenses called superlenti lenses which were a new type of blended myodisc made by Zeis in Germany. They were only available in glass, and Miranda was a little hesitant to try them, but I eventually convinced her to give them a whirl. The doctor discovered that Gail was quite nearsighted for her age, and that she was going to have to wear glasses full time. Her prescription was only -4.25D, which to me didn’t seem all that bad, but apparently it was pretty strong for a 4 year old.
Gail was very happy to wear her new glasses. She no longer squinted at things trying to see them clearly. Miranda wasn’t quite as pleased with her new superlenti lenses as I had hoped that she would be. With her myodiscs, as soon as her eyes hit the edge of the circle she knew that she had to bring her eyes back into the bowl to see properly. But with the superlenti lenses there was no definite edge, and she found it quite hard to get used to that. She complained about these lenses for about 6 months or so before she learned how to use the lenses properly. Once she adapted to them she liked them a lot and she wore these superlenti lenses for about the next 10 years.
By the mid 90’s all 4 kids wore glasses. Jason and Lynn had very mild prescriptions that were around -2.50D or so. Gail, at age 14 wore glasses with a prescription of -14.75D and Diane, who was 16 then required a prescription of -5.50D. Miranda, who by this time was 45 years old, now needed glasses with a prescription of -19D. This was the last time that Miranda would have the superlenti lenses in her glasses, because now they had come out with a 1.9 hi index glass lens. And by the mid 90’s glasses frames had gone back to a fairly small eye size, so Miranda’s strong prescription in a small eye size wire frame done in the 1.9 hi index glass looked quite nice.
Another 10 years went by like lightning. By the mid 2000’s glasses frames were mostly rectangular plastic with wide temples and the lenses of choice were either 1.67 hi index plastic or 1.74 hi index plastic. Miranda looked fantastic with a pair of these rectangular plastic frames with the 1.74 hi index plastic lenses that had her prescription of -21.50D ground into them. There was a little bit at the edge of the lens at the temple side that didn’t have any power in it, but this really wasn’t even that noticeable at a casual glance.
As next spring rolls around we will be celebrating our 44th anniversary. Miranda has continued with her bi annual increases, and her prescription that she is wearing today is right at -23.50D. She has been extremely fortunate and has had no retinal problems yet. The only problem that she has had is that she has grown cataracts at a much earlier age than most people do and according to the doctor this is likely because she very seldom wore her prescription sunglasses.
While both Miranda and I both know that she could have her natural lenses removed and go through the rest of her life wearing a prescription of somewhere around -3.50D she realizes that her strong glasses are very important to me. I was fortunate in that I was smart enough to be completely up front with her about my attraction to her glasses before we were married, and that is why she will come away from her cataract operation requiring glasses that are within a diopter or so of what she has worn for the last few years.
Specs4ever