Julie sat at her lab table, her eyes pushed tight to the special microscope, just like all the other 30 people in the negative pressure lab room. She felt fortunate to have this new job, as just 2 weeks earlier she had been in danger of getting that dreaded pink slip. Then the government had awarded the company that she had formerly been a receptionist for a new contract. They were now testing swabs from people that needed to be tested almost daily to ensure that they did not have the Covid_19 virus and could possibly infect their coworkers in whatever plant they worked at. There were just some places that social distancing was impractical – even impossible, to put in place, especially on the assembly lines of meat packing plants. The country had to eat, and the best solution was for the companies to take worker’s temperatures upon reporting to work. Anyone showing the slightest abnormal level of fever was sent to be swabbed, and these were the swabs that Julie and her coworkers were testing at an amazingly high rate. The training was simple for 20-year-old Julie. She had loved biology in high school, and even though she had taken a secretarial course after she graduated rather than go on to higher education, she had jumped at the chance to work in the lab. She had gotten the hang of the job faster than any of the other trainee’s and she was now the one with the highest number of tests at the end of the day. This had earned her commendations from her supervisor, and possibly a little jealousy from some of her coworkers. Her rating on accuracy when random samples were retested was 100% correct. She had not made a mistake in the first week, and now the second week was almost over with no errors. Julie felt very good about her competency. Julie scrunched her eyes up and squinted at the clock. Another 15 minutes before she could leave and get out of the hot PPE (personal protective equipment) clothing that she had worn all day. That meant another 15 tests and 15 more changes of plastic gloves before she could take a nice shower and catch the subway to the 35E bus she needed to take her home. She couldn’t remember her eyesight being this bad before though. She was sure that just last week she could easily see the clock. Back in her last year of Junior High, when she was around 13 years old, Julie had been prescribed glasses as she was a little nearsighted. She got the glasses, wore them when she needed them to see the board in class, but never left them on for any length of time. That summer Julie was at a summer camp for a month, and her glasses never left their case. When fall came and Julie returned to school, she didn’t bother even taking her glasses with her and when her mom asked her why she wasn’t wearing then Julie told her she could again see perfectly without them. Her mom took her back to see the eye doctor they had previously used, and he pronounced that Julie could easily see the 20/20 line again without glasses. The eye doctor felt that Julie had previously developed a little pseudo myopia, which had disappeared over the summer with her being outside in the fresh air and sunshine at camp. He also felt that by not wearing her glasses at camp Julie had allowed the pseudo myopia to clear up before it turned into permanent myopia. This was unusual, and did not happen very often, as he also explained to Julie and her mom. Julie had not minded the thought of wearing glasses, but was just as happy to not need them any more Now, 7 years later, as Julie walked to the subway stop, she realized that her pseudo myopia must have returned with a vengeance, because of all the close work she was doing. And with this semi lockdown still going on it could be weeks before she could get in to see an eye doctor. She didn’t know if her old eye doctor was even still around and to go to a new one would mean even more of a wait as all the professionals had been required to change their appointment schedules so that no more than 2 or 3 people could be in a waiting room at a time and the waiting room had to be large enough that the 2 meters(6 feet)of safe distancing between people could be maintained at all times. The subway reached the end of the line and Julie headed for the bus platform. She knew where the stop for 35 was, but as the buses pulled up, she could not distinguish between 35A and 35E. She needed 35E, as that was the express bus. 35A would have gotten her home, but it stopped so many times that it would have taken her another 15 minutes to reach her final stop, But she just couldn’t see well enough to ensure that she had the right bus. Finally, she turned to an older gentleman that was also standing on the platform and asked him to check for the 35E bus for her. He did so and finally Julie was on the right bus. She was becoming extremely aware of how poor her eyesight had become. She could no longer even see to read the large print on the advertising posters on the opposite side of the bus. Julie was busy over the weekend. She called her mom Friday evening and her mom was able to locate the name of the eye doctor that Julie had seen when she was 13. Julie called the office and while she felt the receptionist was a little snotty towards her, she didn’t really blame her as Julie had not been there for over 7 years. The receptionist told Julie it would be at least 2 weeks before she had an opening, but when Julie told her that her eyes seemed to have gotten worse all of a sudden when she was doing the COVID_19 testing for assembly line workers the receptionist’s attitude changed and she told Julie that perhaps she could slot her in the following Saturday at around 3 pm. Julie was very grateful and thanked her, but the receptionist thanked her for the work she was doing and Julie realized that was why the attitude of the girl changed and she got her appointment so soon. The following week was absolute hell for Julie. The microscopes she used were self-adjusting for a person’s eyesight. If the user was farsighted the microscope automatically went to the required focusing power they needed. Some users were quite nearsighted and did not take off their glasses, so the adjustment added the little bit of plus they required for the exact focus that was needed. One of Julie’s co workers was around a -10D, but she took off her glasses and the microscope adjusted for her uncorrected myopia. When Julie had first gotten to work Monday morning, she felt that someone had been using her microscope, as it took a few minutes to adjust to her vision. On Friday Julie had looked at the adjustment number and it had been a 2. Now by lunchtime Monday it had gone to a 4. Julie asked Andrea, her coworker with the -10D prescription what her microscope read when she had her glasses off. Andrea told her that hers was a 3. Now Julie was worried. If a person with a -10D prescription only needed a 3, what did a 4 mean? By Friday night when it was time to go home, when Julie looked up from her microscope, she could barely see a thing. Everything was extremely blurred. She peered at the number on the microscope. It now read 6, and this really scared Julie. She stumbled to the shower room and had her required shower. Then she dressed and carefully made her way to the subway platform where she rode to the bus station. As she had needed to do all week, she asked another passenger to let her know when 35E was there, and she got on her bus. The landmarks she had been so used to watching for were no longer things that she could see well enough to go by so she had to listen very carefully for the name of her stop, and she got off for the short walk home to her apartment. Julie couldn’t see enough anymore to watch the television, but she turned it on anyway to listen to the news. She fumbled around the kitchen well enough to throw together something for dinner, but she wondered how she could possibly function if her eyesight continued to deteriorate at such a rapid pace. She tried to read a book, but to see the printing she now had to hold it uncomfortably close to her nose and she soon gave up. She just sat on the couch and wondered if glasses would even help her anymore and if so for how long, before her eyes got even worse. Julie didn’t have a hope that she would be able to take public transit to the eye doctor’s office. She had been warned not to get there too early, as only 3 patients were allowed in the waiting room at a time. The cab company dispatcher was very nice, and Julie explained that she needed to be at the doctor’s office just a few minutes before 3 pm or she would have to stand out on the street in the rain so Julie was told to be at the front door of her apartment at 20 of the hour. Julie explained that she could not see a thing so the cabbie would have to find her and guide her to the cab. When she was in the cab the driver asked if she had lost or ripped her contacts, and not feeling like giving him an explanation he likely wouldn’t believe or even understand Julie just said she had a little eye infection and could not wear contact lenses at the moment. When the cabbie guided Julie into the waiting room she was the only person there. The receptionist wanted her most recent information, so Julie paid the cab driver and gave the receptionist the information she required. It didn’t take long before the girl that does the pre-testing for the doctor came to lead Julie in to have her eyes checked by the auto refractor and to run a couple of other tests. The numbers from the autorefractor were so high the assistant almost didn’t believe Julie when she said that the last time she wore glasses was when she was 13 years old, and after summer camp she no longer needed them, but all this was written right there in Julie’s old file. It didn’t take long for the doctor to determine her prescription. He also had a hard time believing that Julie had gone from not needing glasses to requiring a prescription of over -20D in just 3 weeks. He asked her a lot of questions about the work she was doing, and about the special microscope that adjusted itself to the viewer’s eyesight. He had other patients to see, but he was quite interested in Julie and her sudden onslaught of myopia. He also knew that Julie badly needed some form of correction before she could leave his office, so he had his assistant fit Julie with a pair of -17.50D contact lenses that were in stock for another customer, but happened to be the same diameter and base curve that would fit Julie. Once Julie had the contact lenses in, she was able to see well enough to choose a frame to have her new lenses put in. While the -17.50D contact lenses would give Julie enough vision to function, her glasses prescription that she needed was right at -23.50D for each eye and this prescription would require a -18D contact lens, so she was slightly under corrected at the moment, but she thought it was wonderful how well she could now see and she realized that she had likely been a little nearsighted before anyway because she figured she could see about as well now as she previously could. While Julie was being fitted with the other ladies contact lenses the receptionist had been on the telephone almost the entire time. Another patient had come in and was now talking to her, so Julie had to sit back and wait for a few minutes more before she could pay for the contacts, the glasses, and the eye exam. Julie was surprised when the receptionist told her that there would be no charge. At the doctor’s request the receptionist had been talking to both the manufacturer of the special microscope that Julie had been using, as well as the company where Julie worked. Apparently, the doctor had recently read a special bulletin that had been put out to the eye professional community by the company that manufactured the special vision adjustable microscopes. Due to some sort of programming glitch a few of those microscopes’ self-adjusted to the point where the user was now looking very close up through an extremely strong minus correction. When this happened to the average person their eyes rebelled, and they had to go to the lab manager and complain that there was something wrong with the focusing of their microscope. But a couple of people had reacted similarly to Julie and now had so much pseudo myopia that they could no longer function without wearing a strong correction. Their eyes had just gotten more and more myopic and they were, like Julie, now extremely nearsighted. If Julie had complained a week earlier, before she was completely helpless without her now very strong minus prescription, it is likely that they would have realized that her microscope was over compensating and was placing a stronger and stronger minus prescription in front of Julie’s unusually susceptible eyes. Possibly, with no further force on her eyes Julie might have been able to reduce the pseudo myopia that her ciliary muscles had created. The receptionist told Julie that the doctor had clued in to the fact that Julie’s eyes were very susceptible to pseudo myopia since she had required glasses during her grade 8 school year, but by not wearing them, and being out in the sun all summer, her pseudo myopia had gone away. Julie asked if it was possible that the myopia she had right now would also go away if she didn’t wear glasses or contacts and spent more time in the sun and outdoors, but the receptionist just looked at her and asked: “Honey, do you really think you could go around without those contact lenses now?” Julie had to admit that there was no way she could possibly do a thing without correction now, and she realized that what the doctor had called pseudo myopia was now for all intents and purposes very high permanent myopia. When she checked into work on Monday morning her boss called her into his office. There were 2 men in there with him that he introduced Julie to. These men were the representatives of the manufacturer of the microscope. They talked with Julie for a while, apologizing for the fact that their microscope created such a high degree of myopia in Julie’s eyes so rapidly. They told her that if she signed a document agreeing not to sue them the company would pay her a reasonable sum of money as well as pay for Julie’s eyecare and eyewear requirements for her until she died. Or, if she decided she wanted to have her very nearsighted vision surgically corrected, they would pay all the costs for the operation. The new, very expensive, glasses and the new contacts that Julie had ordered in her correct prescription were already paid for even if she didn’t sign the quit claim document. Julie asked if her microscope had been fixed, and they told her it had been replaced with a new one that was guaranteed to not further harm her very sensitive and now extremely myopic vision. With that she asked if she could think about the offer for a couple of weeks so that she could see what her vision was like with her new glasses and contacts. They agreed that their offer was good for 90 days, but if she were to hire a lawyer and attempt to get more out of the company the offer was off the table. Julie thought that was fair, so she went back to work. At the end of the day she looked at the numbers on the microscope and they read -0.25. Julie knew that her contact lenses had left her slightly uncorrected, so she accepted that this likely represented the uncorrected amount. This number did not change all week and when Julie went back to work the following Monday after picking up her new glasses and contact lenses on Saturday, she noticed that the numbers now read 0.00. It appeared that the new microscope was fixed properly, and Julie did not have to worry about any further deterioration in her eyesight from the microscope. It took a couple of weeks before Julie felt very comfortable wearing her new glasses everywhere she went. She liked the fact that she could also wear contact lenses, but so far, her new contacts were still in the glass vials that they had come in. Julie still had the weaker contacts she could wear, and she felt that they gave her decent enough vision that she would save the new ones for a special occasion. She still had not decided if she was going to sign the quit claim or not. That Friday night Julie went to a bar with some of the people she worked with. She had now been wearing glasses long enough that they felt really comfortable on her and they were so well adjusted she never felt the need to touch them. Everyone had told her she looked really good wearing glasses, but Julie still let a little uncomfortable about how strong they looked. That night she was asked to dance by more guys than had asked any of the other girls. Some of the guys were quite good looking, and she really liked the handsome one named Scott. When Scott asked her if he could take her home, she told him where she lived, and he told her that was not a problem, so she went with him. On the way home Julie could not contain herself any longer. She did not want to try to explain the whole story to Scott about her suddenly becoming very myopic and having to wear glasses, so she simply told him that she had only worn glasses for a couple of weeks now and that her contacts had been bothering her. She asked him why he chose her when she wore such strong glasses. “You know you are extremely attractive right? Well, tonight if you had been wearing your contacts, I likely would have passed you by, because there would be too many other male competitors trying to get your attention. But your perfection is marred slightly by your strong glasses and you become a more approachable, but still a gorgeous person. I can talk to you and I feel more comfortable with you because of your strong glasses. I must admit that I also have found that I like the looks of a girl who wears glasses.” Scott said. On Monday Julie signed the quit claim document and a few days later she deposited a check for $250,000.00 to her bank account. She also ordered a second pair of glasses, because if guys as good looking as Scott thought she was gorgeous wearing glasses as strong as the ones she now needed then she might as well take full advantage of this wonderful myopic opportunity. Specs4ever May2020
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