I had just moved into a two-bedroom apartment within easy driving distance of my new job, so after arranging the furniture and setting up my bed I needed to go to the grocery store for some food to fill the fridge. Oh, I wasn’t going to become a gourmet cook overnight, but I could open a can of beef ravioli and pork and beans with the best of them. And hamburger is easy enough to fry up. Boil some potatoes and throw in some frozen peas just before the hamburger is done and you have a decent enough meal. And of course, I needed some sandwich meat as well as some condiments, bread and bacon and eggs. I was walking down the first aisle when I saw a young lady pushing a cart with a baby in it coming towards me. She looked pretty cute and was probably around my age. But when I looked at the baby a little closer, I almost gasped in surprise. The baby wore glasses. They were a pink pair of those rather ugly shapeless bendable kids’ glasses that are held on with a strap behind the head and even with the tiny lens openings in the frames I could tell that there was quite a strong prescription in them as the fronts were dead flat. I would have rather seen the same prescription on the mother, but all I could hope for was that she was wearing contact lenses. “Cute baby, but pretty young to be wearing such strong glasses.” I remarked. “Yes, she is only 14 months, and she is almost blind.” And then the tears started flowing. Between the tears she told me of having to use most of her money for the baby’s glasses. Her boyfriend, the baby’s father, had taken off with no warning, leaving her all alone with no job, no food and if she bought food no money for the rent. Finally, the tears stopped, and she then apologized for burdening me with her troubles. I asked her if she had applied for assistance, and she told me that she had just walked to the grocery store from the social services offices. They hoped she could get a check before her rent was due, but they couldn’t promise anything. I am not all that flush with funds, but I had some money in the bank, so I offered to buy her groceries and I would drive her home. That was a small problem as I didn’t have a car seat, but we figured we could hide the baby well enough so that I could get her to where she lived. Kelsey was the name of the baby, and Laura, the mother, seemed very grateful for my help. Laura was quite easy on the eyes, and she seemed to have lost all of the weight she had likely gained during her pregnancy. She was 20 when she found out she was pregnant, had dropped out of college to live with her boyfriend and have Kelsey. Now she had just turned 22, had no job and really had no job prospects as she had to look after Kelsey. Her parents had been very upset with Laura when she refused to abort the baby and I have to admit that I agreed with Laura in that if you get pregnant having an abortion is like killing a human being. But her parents had not come around to accepting, or supporting Laura as a single mother, so here she was adrift in a deep sea with no lifeboat. I took them to the small apartment they were renting. Laura insisted that I come up and have a cup of coffee with her as she wanted to get my name and phone number so she could pay me back. I did, and we exchanged phone numbers. But I realized that the chance of payback was slim to none, and I told Laura that she should not worry about paying me back. I had looked as closely and as carefully as I could into Laura’s eyes, and I could see no evidence of her wearing contacts. It would have piqued my interest a bit more if she had worn contacts because I am attracted to girls wearing glasses. They don’t have to be strong glasses however I do prefer that the glasses have minus lenses as I find I like the clear minimization through minus lenses rather than the blurry magnification of plus lenses. I sort of forgot about Laura and Kelsey for the rest of the week but as the weekend drew near, I thought about giving her a call to see how things were going. She answered the phone and I told her who I was, and I asked her how things were progressing. I made a point of telling her I did not call looking for my money back. Laura told me that she had not gotten anything from social services yet and the cupboard was pretty bare. I felt badly for her, and I suggested that I would take them both out to dinner that evening. Being a big-time spender, I took them to the local Mc Donald’s. But it served the purpose and they got fed. Laura had put Kelsey’s car seat in my car and we were able to legally strap Kelsey in place. I did notice when I was looking at the menu board that Laura didn’t seem to need to read the board before she ordered for the two of them, so I just figured that she had been to this place so often she knew the menu off by heart. We drove around town for a while just so that Laura could get away from her worries and the drudgery of her small apartment. I glanced across the front seat at her a few times, and I realized that she really was quite attractive. I also noticed that she seemed to be squinting a lot at things. I guess you could call it squinting, because she narrowed her eyelids and seemed to be looking rather intently through the almost closed eyelids at things. I asked her if she knew where Kelsey’s poor eyesight came from, and she told me that while she figured that she probably needed to get glasses now her eyes had been all right before she was pregnant with Kelsey and that as far as she knew there was no one in her family that needed glasses. Her ex-boyfriend, the father of Kelsey, had not worn glasses but other than meeting his mother and father, who didn’t wear glasses, she did not know any of the rest of his family. The statement that Laura thought she needed glasses was of great interest to me. If she had needed strong glasses like her daughter, I would have been fine with that, but since she was going around without correction, I knew that her prescription would likely be somewhere around -2.00D or less. That is not strong enough to call for full time wear unless the person needing the glasses wanted to wear them, but it is strong enough that she would not be able to drive without glasses. I asked her if she drove and she replied that she had gotten her license back when she was 17, but right now she would be afraid to drive without first getting herself a pair of glasses. That was all I needed to hear. Now my next plan was to get Laura a pair of glasses, but I wasn’t sure how I could suggest this when we barely knew each other. However, fate intervened in a far better way. It was near the end of the month, and a few days later my phone rang. It was Laura, and social services still had not come through with any money. Her landlord had told her that without her rent payment she needed to be out of the apartment by the end of the month. I really didn’t think it through completely when I opened my mouth and told Laura that she and Kelsey could stay with me, but that I only had one bed at the moment. I said she could sleep on the couch and if Kelsey’s crib was something, she owned we could move it into the small second bedroom that I was using as an office. She gratefully accepted my offer, and I drove over to help her pack up her belongings and move the crib. It was late when we got the crib back together and all of the other stuff carried upstairs. There really wasn’t a whole lot, just clothing and some dishes and pots and pans along with a box of books and a couple of boxes of diapers for Kelsey. We got Kelsey settled and we sat together on the couch for a while with Laura cuddled in my arms. She started to cry as I held her and when I asked why she was crying she told me that she wished she had found herself as nice person as I was before she had gotten pregnant. After Laura stopped crying, I went to turn the TV on, but she asked me not to as she told me that she really couldn’t see it that well and trying to watch it would give her a terrible headache. My couch isn’t very comfortable, and I mentioned this to Laura. I told her that I had a queen bed in my bedroom and if she wanted to share it with me, I promised not to touch her in any way unless she wanted me to. As time went on Laura and Kelsey continued living with me and Laura seemed to be squinting more and more every day. Finally, I told her that she really needed to have an eye exam and get herself a pair of glasses. Of course, she told me that she couldn’t afford it, but I insisted and after I told her that stress, as well as going without glasses when they were needed as badly as she now seemed to need them, had a pretty good chance to make her eyesight get worse faster. Naturally she asked me how I knew that, and I told her I had read it in an article on the Internet. I guess my pushing Laura had the effect I wanted because a couple of days later she asked me how she could afford glasses if she had her eyes examined. Even though the social service office had not yet sent through any money for her for her rent, she was still registered with them and had a rather basic form of assisted health care for both Kelsey and herself that would pay for the eye exam. I showed her a couple of online internet glasses suppliers and I showed her that a pair of glasses in a lower than -5.00D prescription could be purchased for less than $10.00 if you chose the cheapest lenses and no options. Even a $25.00 frame could be purchased with lenses included and another $5.00 cost for anti-reflective coating. With that Laura was a little more willing to allow me to buy her a pair of glasses. Laura made an appointment with one of the eye doctors listed on her approved list and I took a day off work to accompany her to have her eyes checked as she needed someone to look after Kelsey. I am not sure how great an eye exam the doctor gave Laura, because he didn’t spend much time in the exam room with her. One of the receptionist’s had taken Laura into another room and I suspected that she had used some sort of machine to check Laura’s eyesight, so the doctor likely didn’t have to do much work. Laura came out with a slip of paper in her hand. We had arrived a little early and we had checked out a few frames to see what shape looked the best on her face, so we knew that there were frames with this same shape on the web sites that were much cheaper than the ones in the doctor’s place were. We strapped Kelsey back into the car seat and headed for the apartment. After I fired up the computer, I asked Laura for her prescription slip. I took a second look because I couldn’t believe what was written on it. I would have guessed that she would be somewhere between a -2D to -2.50D. A -3D would have been a stretch, and -3.50D would have been the absolute maximum I would have guessed. But for her to be -4.50 x -0.75 x 100 and -4.50 x -1.00 x 88 was really over the top. She must have been using every bit of accommodation that she could muster in order to see as well as she had seemed to be able to. I had plans to add at least -1.00D to her spherical when I filled out the order, but now I was in a bit of a quandary. Could I add -1.00D and not get caught? Could I add -1.50D and hope that Laura would not question that the glasses seemed too strong until she got used to wearing them? Very few eye doctors will write the distance between the patient’s two eyes on the prescription slip. They don’t want to make it too easy for people to order online and with most of the online places the first number they need, after choosing a frame, is the pupillary distance in millimeters. I ran across that the first time I had looked at the website, so I knew that I had to measure this distance. The closest I could come up with was 63, so that is what I put in. Then I filled out the prescription and I finally decided to take this as my only chance to go the whole hog. I put in -6.00D as the spherical for both eyes and I filled in the astigmatism as written on the prescription slip. We had checked out one of the newest model frames and had done a picture try-on of them on the face shape that most resembled Laura. I thought they looked a little large for Laura’s face as Laura had a fairly narrow face with a chin that was also a bit narrow. But I knew that with -6.00D lenses in the regular plastic that these glasses would look like the lenses were reasonably thick. I did order the 1.50 photo chromatic option for her lenses and the cost, including shipping, was going to be around $115.00. It took a good 3 weeks before the glasses were in the mailbox. I hadn’t given Laura a key to the lobby box, and I was glad I hadn’t when I found them in the mail that Friday evening. I was tempted to open the package and take a quick look at them as I rode up in the elevator with the parcel in my hand, but I wisely chose not to. Laura and I opened the parcel together and I was amazed at how wonderfully thick the lenses looked. Laura wasn’t quite as thrilled as I was, but she did put them on. I expected the reaction I got about them feeling so strong and I simply told her that it might take a couple of days of wearing them before they felt perfect. She did say that she could really see well through the lenses after wearing them for a few minutes so I remarked that this must mean that they were the exact thickness that she needed. I did remind her that we chose the cheapest lens option and although I did change the order for the lenses that go dark in the sunlight, I still left the lenses at the same 1.5 index. Once she had glasses Laura did wear them from the minute she opened her eyes in the morning until she took them off to go to sleep at night. The front of her lenses were not completely flat, but they were so close to flat it was hard to tell. She loved the fact that she could go out in the daytime and the lenses would go dark fairly quickly. She commented a few times that her eyes had gotten a lot worse since she got her glasses, but I suggested that since her eyes no longer had to work as hard to try to focus, she just wasn’t able to make her eyes see what they could before. She knew from trying to see through the lenses in Kelsey’s glasses that just because the lenses in her glasses looked as thick as Kelsey’s lenses did that her lenses were much weaker than Kelsey’s. It took a long time before Laura quit complaining about how bad her eyes were, and about how thick her glasses needed to be in order for her to see anything at all. Shortly after that her ex-boyfriend showed up back in our lives. Laura had filed for child support soon after he left her. He didn’t pay any of it and the courts attached a lien to his license so he could not renew either his driver’s license, or his vehicle license. He was rather upset, to put it mildly. I told him straight up that if he was willing to give up his parental rights to Kelsey that I would take over his obligations. He agreed to this and gave me his number so I could call him when my lawyer had the papers drawn up for him to sign. I did have to agree to have Laura get the court to lift the license suspensions immediately though. By this time Kelsey, Laura and I had been living together for a bit over a year. Kelsey had actually just turned 3 a couple of weeks earlier. There really had been no talk about marriage between Laura and me, but we had been having sex together for most of that period and I was pretty sure that it was the right time to take things to a higher level and maybe give Kelsey a brother or a sister. That night, after Derrick had left Laura asked me exactly what I was thinking when I told Derrick that I would take over his obligations. I told her that I meant exactly what I said, and if she was willing, I would like to marry her. I could see the tears well up in her eyes behind the thick lenses and as they trickled down her cheeks, I held her tight, took her glasses off and dried her tears. I got aroused looking at Laura trying to struggle to see without her glasses and I whispered in her ear that she should say yes. She did and I kissed her before giving her glasses back to her. I got a marriage license and we ended up getting married by a justice of the peace. Laura didn’t want anyone there from her family, and I wasn’t very close to mine, so everything was perfect for the two of us. Kelsey, who was now 3 1/2 was the only other one there and the JP had to call a couple of people from his office to be witnesses. I had told Laura that I wanted us to have a couple of children, so she had gone off the pill as soon as we had decided to be married. I did make sure that I used a condom until it had been almost 6 months since she last had a birth control pill. But it didn’t take long after that before Laura was pregnant. I had hoped that during another pregnancy Laura would develop some more myopia, but she went the full 9 months without complaining that she was having any trouble seeing things in the distance. I figured that this meant that she had likely used up the extra -1.50D that I had added to her prescription and now my only hope for having her become a little more myopic was going to be with our third child. By now the computer room had been taken over by a single bunk bed and the crib. Kelsey wanted to have the top bunk right off the bat, but we told her that she needed to use the bottom bunk for now. With 2 girls it wasn’t going to be a problem having them in one room, but if the third child was a boy, I figured we would need a bigger place. Amy was an easy birth and Laura was only in the hospital for a day before we brought the baby home. Kelsey was still wearing the same glasses she had gotten before I even met Laura and her. She didn’t seem to be having any trouble seeing things, but I was thinking it would be a good idea to be proactive and get her new glasses. She would be going to junior kindergarten the next year so an eye exam now would be prudent. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have a spare pair of glasses around for her as she would be quite helpless if anything happened to her glasses. It took a while for me to get around to making an appointment with an eye doctor for Kelsey. And then Laura asked me to make one for her as well, as she thought she wasn’t seeing quite as well as she had been. Kelsey required a -3D increase, making her new glasses -18D for both eyes. Laura surprised me though when she actually required an increase of -1.50D. I ordered Kelsey a new pair of -18D glasses in real girls’ glasses (instead of the funky flexible children’s glasses that she already wore) and then I increased Laura’s now -7.50D prescription up to a -8.50D. I was making enough money that I could have easily paid for high index lenses for both Kelsey and Laura, but I just ordered the same 1.50 regular plastic lenses for both of them. I did talk Laura into ordering a frame that was a little smaller than her existing 53 x 18mm lens opening size and her new glasses were going to be 51 x 18 for the opening. The day their new glasses arrived both Laura and Kelsey put their new glasses on and never took them off except to sleep. They had to shave a little bit of the outer lens edge off on Kelsey’s new glasses, but Laura’s were full thickness right to the temple side of the frame. And now the fronts of her lenses were dead flat. I loved the appearance although predictably Laura thought they were too thick. I promised her that if she needed another prescription increase then we would spend the extra money for the higher index lenses, but I wasn’t sure if we could get the photo chromatic lenses in a higher index. When Amy was 6 months old, we took her for a comprehensive vision exam, and the eye doctor told us that her vision was right where it should be for a 6-month-old baby. So that was a bit of a relief as Laura was afraid that Kelsey’s myopia might have come from her, even though I told her that since she was not myopic before Kelsey was born it was not likely that it came from her. I explained that her myopia originally was probably caused by hormonal changes during her pregnancy with Kelsey, and then her eyes got worse and worse because she was straining them trying to see without having glasses. I enjoyed looking at Laura a lot now. Her new glasses were thick enough that they gave the appearance that she really needed them badly. And I kept telling her that I really liked her appearance when she was wearing glasses so that she would not even think of asking for contact lenses. I would have been quite content to continue buying Laura the same 1.50 index lenses in her - 8.50D prescription if she never needed another increase. She was almost as dependent on her glasses as her daughter was on hers with a prescription that was more than twice as strong. And I figured if she did get pregnant again it would likely only bring her prescription to a point that it would match her glasses. It would have been nice, and a bit of a relief to my burden of being the only income earner if Laura could have gotten a job, but there wasn’t much that she could do that would allow her to earn more than the money that day care for the 2 kids would have cost us. I was also at the point where I did not want to have to raise another baby in that 2-bedroom apartment. It was just too tiny for 5 people even if 3 of them were rug rats. We really needed a 3-bedroom house. A duplex would do fine. Heck, anything with a little patch of grass in the back yard would work. But saving up the down payment was the killer. I just couldn’t seem to put that much away with all of our other expenses. I wanted to purchase a place, but anything we could afford was so far away from my job that I would have been spending a lot of extra time on city transit. Fate intervened one day as I was walking home from the bus stop. An older home on a decent sized lot had been sold, and today they were tearing down the old house. I stopped and spoke to the gentleman who seemed to be supervising the tear down. He was the property owner, and he was putting up a new home with 3 floors, including the basement which was going to be more than halfway out of the ground so it would have decent sized windows everywhere except on the front wall. His plans were to rent 2 floors and live in the middle floor with his own family. Each floor was going to have 3 bedrooms, a living area, an eating area, a kitchen, and a bathroom. There would also be a small room for laundry facilities on the bottom floor. Since Laura was not pregnant again yet I told him I would rent one of the apartments. I also told him that we had 2 girls, one 5 and one just a year old and that we were trying for a boy but would stop at 3 kids no matter what sex it was. He was very interested, and his ears perked up when I told him that our own place was fine until the new house was finished so he took my name and phone number, and I got his. I watched the progress of the new house being built and around the time I thought we still had a month or so before it was finished, I called the owner to confirm that I still had first dibs on the apartment. He told me I had it for sure, so I gave my notice to the manager of my present apartment building. And I guess we had been a little premature, because now Laura was pregnant again. Last time with Amy she had not experienced any increase in her myopia during pregnancy, but this time she was now complaining that she seemed to need new glasses. I convinced her that it would be better to wait until after the baby was born by telling her that possibly her prescription might revert to what it had been before her pregnancy, but in reality, I hoped that her struggling to see clearly would actually increase her myopia. My ideal prescription for Laura would be around -12D in hi index lenses, but if she only reached -10D I figured I would be satisfied with around -10D as long as I ordered her the 1.67 index lenses. Since this was likely my last chance for her to develop any further myopia, I knew I would be making it a good bump. We managed to get moved into our new place and we had it set up nicely well before the baby was due. This baby was much bigger than Amy had been, and Laura told me that it was bigger than Kelsey had been, so we hoped it was a boy. And it was. Scott was a healthy 8.6-pound baby and was perfect in every way. Once she was home from the hospital with Scott, I told Laura that she could consider having her eyes examined anytime now and she told me she really needed new glasses very badly and that we should do the eye exam soon. By now Kelsey was almost 6 and Amy was 2 so they both needed their vision checked as I had noticed Kelsey squinting a little at things every so often. I wanted to make the appointment for a Thursday evening, but we were going to have to wait 2 more weeks before there was an evening appointment available for Laura, Kelsey and Amy. As I had hoped Amy did not need glasses, however the doctor did tell us that Amy seemed to have shifted from slight hyperopia to emmetropic and this shift was a little earlier than most kids so it was possible that she might be a little nearsighted by the time she started school. Kelsey requited a -2D increase and now her -20D glasses were going to be the strongest ones we could order online from the supplier we had been using. Laura was the biggest surprise. I had hoped for around -10D, but it turned out she was now -11.50D for both eyes. This was right around the point where her prescription should have been perfect for me for the rest of her life. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone and I ordered her new glasses in the 1.67 index and changed the prescription to -13.50D. I knew this was it, my last chance, and I was going to have to be satisfied with this prescription forever now. I ordered Laura 2 pairs of glasses this time. One pair was done in the 1.67 hi index plastic and the other pair was in the regular old 1.5 index plastic. She chose the same frame for both pairs, and I was going to order the regular plastic one darkly tinted for sunglasses but at the last minute I decided to get them clear, and I could always use a local optical shop to have them tinted so I just ordered them without the anti-reflection coating. I also ordered a second pair for Kelsey because Kelsey had been falling asleep while reading with her glasses still on her face and she sometimes bent them a little so one of us had to straighten them out in the morning. I was afraid that we would break off one of the temples or else she would snap them at the bridge, so I also ordered her a second pair. In her -20D prescription regular index plastic was not available, so I ordered one pair in 1.74 index and the other pair in 1.67 index, and I ordered the second pair with a sturdy looking frame. The first package we opened contained Laura’s regular plastic glasses. When I saw them, I would have loved it if Laura would have worn them full time. The lenses were concave on both the front and the rear, and the thickness was even thicker than the -18D pair that Kelsey was still wearing. Laura tried them on and predictably she hated them, telling me that she would never wear them, even as sunglasses. The second package contained Kelsey’s nighttime glasses and she was not unhappy with the way they looked because, as she said, she could see everything so much better now. The third package was the daily wear 1.74 hi index ones and they looked darling on her. Yes, you could tell that they were a strong prescription, but the lenses were flat on the front and the lenses were what is called full field, so they no longer had the outer edge shaved off. Kelsey was thrilled with them. The final package contained Laura’s 1.67 index glasses and when she saw them, she was much happier. She immediately removed the biconcave pair and relegated them to the case they came in. Kelsey loved having a special pair of glasses to wear to read in bed. And the frames were just strong enough that if she fell asleep with them on, they stayed on her all night and did not come out all bent and misshapen in the morning. Scott had his own ideas about Laura’s glasses and one night when she was feeding him, he took them off her face and flung them onto the carpet. Laura had to wake me up and get me to come and find her glasses, because she couldn’t see well enough to find them, and she was afraid she would step on them and break them. After that Laura began wearing the glasses that she swore she would never wear around the house, and she even started wearing them to bed to sleep with one night after she knocked them off the nightstand and had to grope around to find them in the middle of the night while Scott was crying to be fed. I had a vasectomy, and we were still having sex fairly frequently, so she wanted to take them off before we made love, but I talked her into leaving them on as told her I didn’t mind how she looked wearing them. I enjoyed waking up before she did in the morning and just lying there staring at her wearing a pair of glasses that were far thicker looking than I could have ever hoped she would be able to wear when we first met. A couple more years went by rather quickly and both Kelsey’s and Laura’s eyes seemed to be fairly stable for the moment. I really didn’t expect Laura to have any further increases, but I did watch Kelsey closely to ensure that she wasn’t squinting at things. It might only have been my imagination, but as I watched Amy, I thought I could notice that she was doing a bit of squinting though. Amy was 4 now and she would be going to junior kindergarten in the fall, so we were going to have to have her eyes checked before school started. I had figured that Amy would be prescribed glasses, but the doctor said that while she seemed to be a little nearsighted it would be better to wait for at least another year before we put her into glasses. Kelsey was fine with her -20D prescription, but Laura had gone up between -0.75 and -1.00D over the prescription I had ordered for her glasses. The doctor we used this time wrote her out a new prescription for -14.50 x -1.50 x 100 and -14.50 x -2.00 x 88. Her astigmatism had almost doubled according to this new doctor. He did not know that I had bumped Laura’s last prescription from -11.50D to the -13.50D that was in her existing glasses and when the nurse read the prescription in those glasses, she just gave the slip to the doctor. When he said her spherical had not increased that much, he did not know about the extra -2.00D. Laura did not want me to order her second pair of glasses in the regular thick plastic. She wanted both pairs done in hi index because Scott was no longer a problem. He had been told enough times to leave both Kelsey and Laura’s glasses alone that he had stopped grabbing at them. I went ahead and increased her prescription by an extra -1.00D and ordered the one pair of -15.50D glasses in 1.67 index and I ordered the other pair in the 1.56 index and when they came in, they were even thicker than the old 1.50 index glasses had been. They were again biconcave, but this time the back of the outer edge of the lens had been shaved off. And the 1.67 index lenses were also biconcave, but they were full field lenses. Again, Laura did not notice that her glasses were a bit stronger than she needed so I was fortunate once again. Laura spent a lot of time complaining about how bad her eyes were and finally I told her that I had heard enough. Her eyes were not as bad as our 8-year-old daughters were and I really didn’t want to hear her complain any more until her eyesight got to be worse than Kelsey’s eyes were. This actually stopped the complaints, but she did ask me if I thought it was possible that her eyes would really get worse than Kelsey’s. I told her that it was a shock to me that her eyes had gotten as bad as they were, but I still loved her and even if they got to a point where they were worse than Kelsey’s, I would still love her as much as I did now. The doctor had not said anything about Laura possibly having progressive myopia. She was now almost 30, and for her eyes to have deteriorated a full -3.00D in only 2 years there was something strange going on. I knew I had increased her prescription in her older glasses by a total of -4.50 for all of her glasses and the other -11D had just been natural increases - likely helped along by the increases I had given her, but I couldn’t be sure of that. Laura read a lot, and when she read, she brought her tablet quite close to her face. She also had fair skin that burnt easily in the sun, so she didn’t spend a lot of time outdoors. Since Scott was born, she had been having a bit of trouble with her period and the doctor had put her on an estrogen tablet. According to what I read on the internet all those things were a harbinger for increasing myopia in a person. And her myopia was certainly increasing as in 6 months she had already used up the extra -1.00D I had added to her glasses, and she was now complaining about everything being blurry again. I didn’t want to take her back to the same doctor we had used last time, but Laura had liked him a lot, so she wanted to see him again. I wasn’t happy about this, but I figured I would just tell him I ordered the glasses correctly, but the online company must have made an error. I was worried for nothing. The receptionist didn’t even check Laura’s glasses but just took Laura in to use the autorefractor on her. I saw her staple the results to Laura’s file and then she took Laura down the hall to the exam room. I stayed in the waiting area with the 3 kids, as Kelsey and Amy were going to have their eyes checked as well. Laura finally came out with the doctor. Kelsey and Amy had already been checked by the autorefractor and Kelsey wanted to have mommy with her when she had her eyes tested by the doctor. Laura went back in with Kelsey, and when they came out both Laura and Kelsey were smiling so I knew that Kelsey’s prescription had not changed. Laura then went back in with Amy, and when the doctor came back with them, I asked if Amy needed glasses now. The doctor surprised me when he told me that Amy was now able to see the 20/20 line this year, so she had no need for glasses yet. I knew that Laura’s vision had really been bad before we went to have this eye exam, so I then asked about Laura. The doctor told me that he did not understand why Laura had such a large jump in her myopia, as she was past the age where most people have serious yearly increases. With that I knew Laura had quite an increase, but I wasn’t prepared when he told me that her vision was fine with a prescription of -17.00D, but that he was going to prescribe glasses with lenses that were -18.00D along with her astigmatism, which had increased to -3.00D in both eyes. His reasoning for increasing her glasses prescription by -1.00D was that if she found that the -18.00D was a little too strong she could drop her glasses a little lower on her nose, but that that deterioration in her vision was so rapid if he prescribed the -17D lenses she would likely need new glasses within 3 or 4 months. This way he hoped that Laura would be able to see satisfactorily for at least 6 months, which was when he wanted me to bring Laura back for another eye exam. The bright spot for me was that Amy didn’t need glasses, and Kelsey didn’t need an increase so her -20D glasses would be good for another year. I knew what that meant. With an extra -1.00D added to Laura’s now extremely high prescription I had better not add any more to it myself. And the way her eyesight was deteriorating I was soon going to have to find another online supplier, because -20.00D was the strongest prescription that the one supplier we had been satisfied with could provide. I ordered Laura’s new glasses with the prescription the eye doctor had provided. Her OD was -18.00 x -3.00 x 100 and her OS was -18.00 x -3.00 x 88. Her first prescription that she had gotten before Kelsey even turned 2 was only -4.50 x -0.75 x 100 and -4.50 x -1.00 x 88. I had increased the spherical in her first glasses to be – 6.00D in both eyes, and Laura had found that for the first few days she had a lot of trouble getting used to them. Now I wondered if the first doctor we had taken Laura to see had possibly given Laura a little stronger prescription than she had needed at the time, and when I had added the extra -1.50D to her spherical that she had really been over corrected by a lot more than I had intended. I didn’t know what had really happened, but something had jump started her myopia. Fortunately, this last doctor had given her a thorough retinal exam and he had told us that she showed no signs of any form of lattice degeneration or other retinal problems. Laura did not want to spend the money to buy her 2 pairs of glasses. She felt that since the eye doctor had told her to expect further deterioration in her vision within 6 months that it would be a waste of money. I tried to tell her that this was not exactly what he had said. What the doctor had told us was that he expected that she had not reached the end of her increases, and that he felt that she had a form of progressive myopia that would likely keep increasing. But he had only told her to come back for a further checkup in 6 months, not that she would need stronger glasses then. There was no sense arguing with her, so I did only order her one new pair. I did tell her that I wasn’t going to spend the money for the highest index lenses if her new glasses were only going to last for 6 months though. Her new glasses arrived, and they really did not look very attractive to anyone but a confirmed glasses lover like me. They were biconcave on the front, and the rear was done as a lenticular myodisc. I suspected that the front of the lenses held the astigmatism portion of her prescription, and the rear had the spherical, but I could not be sure. Laura hated them but she had no choice other than to wear them. I liked them, although they did give her the appearance of being as blind as a mole without them - when she had them on. When I took Laura back for the 6-month checkup the doctor told us that her glasses would be fine for another few months, although she had used up the little extra that he had added to her prescription. Laura had not complained about being unable to see clearly, so I was pretty sure that this is what the doctor would say. I knew that she hated her glasses, but I was quite content with her appearance wearing them, and I made sure I told her often that I thought she looked very pretty. By the time Laura had worn the -18D glasses for a year she started talking about the possibility of getting a new pair with thinner lenses. I suggested that if she went for another year, it might mean that her myopia had stopped progressing and then we could spend the extra money to buy a nicer looking pair of glasses with the thinnest possible lenses. I did warn her that even the thinnest lenses would look pretty thick in her prescription though and that seemed to end the discussion. She realized that since we were raising 3 children on just my income, she would rather just continue wearing her thick glasses until she really needed a new pair. Kelsey, Amy and Scott had all had their eyesight checked at this time as well. Kelsy was going to be fine for another year, while Amy and Scott still didn’t need glasses. I will never know for sure what started Laura on the slippery slope that led to her being an extremely high myope. But I often thank my lucky stars that I met Laura and her very nearsighted daughter that day in the supermarket. Specs4ever May 2020.
https://vision-and-spex.com/the-girl-in-the-supermarket-t2380.html