When I was born to John and Mary Nichols in 1984 my dad was a huge fan of Stevie Nicks and the 70’s group Fleetwood Mac. To this day, some 32 years later, I still hear Fleetwood Mac songs running through my head at times. And, because I was a girl I guess my dad thought it would be cute to name me Stephanie Lynn Nichols. Was I called Stevie Nicks all through my school years? You can bet I was, and until 5 years ago when I married Jason Richardson I would cringe whenever anyone would make a joke about me being named after Stevie Nicks. Now I have managed to change things so that most people who have not known me forever call me Steph, and my name tag at the pharmacy where I work simply says Steph so most people who have just met me only know me as Steph. And that is just fine with me.
Jason is 2 years younger than I am and we often put up with a bit of teasing about him robbing the cradle. But he was 24 and I was 26 when we married, so the 2 years isn’t really that much of a difference. I had figured that no man would ever be interested in me because of my strong glasses. When I first met Jason I had just had gotten my new glasses with their -25.00D prescription and I was feeling pretty self-conscious wearing those thick myodiscs. Even though I stand about 5’8”, weigh 135 lbs, and am quite attractive, with long honey blond hair, nice legs and a pretty decent bust my glasses had, in the past, turned off more than a couple of decent looking men. And if any guy ever asked me out and then went on to ask me why I didn’t wear contacts he was never even considered for a second date.
But Jason was different. The first time he came into the pharmacy to have a prescription filled he commented on how nice my new glasses looked on me. For him to notice that I had gotten new glasses made me realize that this wasn’t likely the first time I had seen him, but as hard as I racked my brains I couldn’t remember him. The only thing that I could think of was that he had probably never had a prescription filled, but had been in the pharmacy buying over the counter stuff, and I just hadn’t paid him any attention. Working in the pharmacy kept us pretty busy, and I really didn’t have a lot of time to look over the customers to see if there were any guys giving me the eye.
We had a fairly quick courtship. It didn’t take me long to realize that Jason adored me, and he certainly didn’t mind the fact that I was as blind as a mole without my coke bottle glasses. The first few times we slept together and made love I tried to leave my glasses off. But with a -25D prescription my focal point, where my clear vision ended, was about 40mm past the front of my cornea. This is 1.57 inches, and you can imagine that there was no point at which I could see Jason clearly unless he was right there, within less than 2” in front of my eyes. Sure, the blur didn’t prevent me from seeing his basic outline, but I could not make out his facial expressions or even his adoration of me reflected in his beautiful blue eyes. Finally, after the first 2 or 3 times that we had sex together, I asked him if he minded if I wore my glasses anytime we made love in the daytime, and after that whenever we stayed together on a Saturday night the first thing he would do on a Sunday morning would be to gently place my glasses in my hands so I could put them on myself. I loved his tenderness, and I loved the fact that he did not seem concerned about my virtually nonexistent eyesight. And best of all, he had never mentioned a word to me about the possibility of me ever getting contacts.
Once Jason and I were married we wasted no time in starting a family. Emily came along within the first 9 months, and of course we told everyone she was a little premature, but we knew that I had already been pregnant a couple of weeks before the wedding. And when Emily was 2, her brother Paul was born. So now Emily will soon be 5, and Paul is going to be 3 and we are all finished having kids. It was a real struggle, but I did manage to lose the excess weight I had gained during my 2 pregnancies, and now I am back to my normal 135 lbs. I was before the kids came along.
I am also back to work pretty much full time. Even while I was pregnant with both kids I worked for as long as I possibly could, and then a couple of months after childbirth I went back to work part time. I had lots of seniority at the pharmacy, so I could pick and choose my hours. Fortunately Jason worked a regular 9 to 5 day job, so with his cooperation I would use a breast pump to pump any excess milk and after he got home from work at 6 I would go to work at the pharmacy until it closed at midnight. He was wonderful with both the kids, and he never seemed to mind changing the dirty diapers and feeding them and all that stuff a mother is generally stuck with doing. As a result we have been able to make a pretty decent inroad on paying off our mortgage and we are being pretty careful not to slip up and have another child.
I was a little surprised about a month ago when I went for my annual eye exam. With my high myopia it was recommended that I have a complete retinal exam every year, and they often map my inner eye to make sure that there are no degenerative changes. My eyes were again pronounced to be quite healthy considering how very myopic I am, and I was told that with the slight increase I required in my prescription I would again be able to easily see the 20/40 that was the minimum requirement for me to maintain my driver’s license. This came as a complete shock to me. My prescription had crept up to -26.00D and I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t seeing as well as I possibly could. It was amazing when I put my new -26D glasses on a couple of weeks later and I realized just how much better I could see with them. After I was prescribed my -25D prescription it was implied to me that I would have that prescription forever, and I was just so thankful to have that -25D prescribed instead of the -20D prescription I had been wearing that I didn’t ask any more questions.
I suppose an explanation as to why I was thankful to be prescribed a -5D increase over my old -20D glasses is in order, as I rather doubt that anyone else in the world would be a happy camper to be told they needed to have a -5D increase in their prescription. But in order for me to tell you how that came about I need to go back in time; back to when I was a young teenaged girl.
As I told you, I was named after Stevie Nicks, the gorgeous female singer from the 70’s group Fleetwood Mac. Dad was such a huge fan of hers that he had every one of their albums on vinyl. And, to this day, if she or her old group releases a new CD, he adds it to his collection. I grew up watching MTV videos of her and one of the very first books I read was a coffee table edition that gave the group’s whole life story and history. You could say I was totally slammed with Stevie Nicks. I knew that she was very nearsighted and before she got her hard contact lenses they had to lead her onto the stage because she couldn’t see a thing without her glasses. This was a closely kept secret that everyone knew about but still, with as much searching as I have done, I have not been able to locate any pictures that showed her wearing her glasses so I could get an idea of just how nearsighted she might actually have been. I did find a picture once that sort of showed a little bit of cut in, however if these were her real glasses they couldn’t have been much over -1D, and that, to me, isn’t legally blind which is what she had often been described as being. She had gotten hard contact lenses at one point, and hard contacts are, like they say, pretty hard to wear. They require a regular regime of care, and your eyes don’t like having them worn for too many hours in one day. Unfortunately for Stevie she got addicted to a number of prescription drugs with, or without, them being legally prescribed, and through over wear of her hard contacts she ruined her chances of wearing contacts any longer. Fortunately before she became one of the suicide by drugs stars she got off the drugs and cleaned up her act. She also was one of the early adapters for eye surgery and it has been said that her vision is still quite poor, but no details are readily available. Considering her age, it is more than likely that she needs reading glasses to see anything up close and maybe that is why she once told a fan who wanted her to sign an autograph that her vision was atrocious.
My dad was so obsessed with Stevie that I think that is why I became obsessed with becoming nearsighted. My honey blond hair was worn long just like Stevie. I dressed in similar clothing to Stevie, and one time I heard my dad comment to mom that “she” could be just like Stevie if I was only nearsighted. Fortunately Stevie got involved with drugs and her antics were all over the news so my dad was a little disillusioned by this, but for me the damage was already done. I now wanted to wear glasses in the worst way so that I could please daddy and be just like Stevie. I turned 12, and then I turned 13, and so far I had not needed glasses. But when I was 14 my mom and my dad were talking and I heard my mom tell him that she thought I might need glasses because I was always squinting at things and I brought my head pretty close to whatever I was doing.
I did need glasses. But with a prescription of only -1D it was more like looking through plain glass. I felt like a phony whenever I put my glasses on because people could see right away that I didn’t really need them. But I did need them because now without them I couldn’t see the chalkboard in class. This first pair of glasses probably spent more time on the top of my head than they did on my nose though.
This was back in 1998. We had recently gotten a computer and I started doing internet searches on vision and eye problems. I ran across a website that had all sorts of discussions on eyesight and how you could wear plus contact lenses under strong minus glasses. From this website I learned how to alter a prescription so that you could get stronger lenses in your glasses than you really needed, and I found that if you took an altered prescription into a 1 hour optical store after the eye doctor whose name was on the prescription had closed for the day, once you got your glasses there was no possibility that anyone would ever check out your prescription to see if it was real.
By the time I was 15 my -1D lenses were no longer strong enough. Now, without any glasses at all my vision was noticeably crappy. I knew I needed stronger glasses. Mom had saved my original prescription slip in a file so I went to a copy store and made a copy of it. Then I brought it home and I used white out to make it into a blank prescription slip. Then I went back to the copy store and made another copy – a nice clean blank copy of my doctor’s prescription slip. Actually I made 5 extra copies which I took home and carefully cut to the exact size as the original.
Mom allowed me to go to the eye doctor by myself so that she didn’t have to take time off work. As I had expected my prescription needed to be stronger as it was now -2.25D. From what I had learned on the website I should be able to wear as much as -3D stronger than my real prescription without too much difficulty after I had a bit of time to get used to it. I went on home, and had supper with my parents, but first I wrote out a new fake prescription showing that I now needed -5.25D for both eyes. After supper dad drove me over to the mall and we chose a new frame for my new glasses. I was shaking in my boots when the optician looked at the prescription slip and then took a look at my old glasses and remarked that this was quite a prescription change. But I just said that the doctor had told me that my eyes had gotten a lot worse, and that it sometimes happens really quickly when a person is growing. She merely commented that this was true, and after dad paid for my new glasses she put the order into have the new lenses placed in the frames.
My glasses were ready within the hour. When my name was called I went over to have my glasses fitted and I had a hard time focusing. I had the worst time when she would take them off for a minute to bend the earpieces, and then would put them back on me to see if they fit properly, but finally they were sitting comfortably in place on my face. I could sort of focus well enough to read the sign on the far wall well enough to satisfy the optician that this was my correct prescription. Thank goodness she didn’t give me one of those little cards to read up close because I couldn’t possibly have read it that night.
It took me a few days before my eyes felt that they were willing to accept the big change in my glasses. But in a couple of weeks I was able to read as much as I wanted with my glasses on. Now I never took my glasses off, and when I looked at myself in a mirror I was pleased that my glasses finally looked like they had real prescription lenses in them. I was pretty happy that my little trick had worked as well as it had.
The following year, after I had my 16th birthday, I passed the eye test for my driver’s license with my -5.25D glasses. They felt like they were just the right prescription for my eyes now, and I knew that if I wanted to have even stronger glasses I had better not wait any longer before I bumped up the strength of my glasses. And my internet friends were also telling me to get on with it or forget any possibility of having a strong prescription.
When I went home I told my parents that I had been advised that my vision was barely good enough to pass the eye test for my beginners permit and it was suggested that I should get myself new glasses. My dad’s health insurance paid for eye exams, and dad never saw the bill. I just presented the card, and the doctor got paid. Without bothering to visit the optometrist I then wrote myself out a new prescription on another of my blank prescription slips and went off to the same one hour optical. I had debated with myself for quite a while as to what I should put down on the prescription slip for a new prescription. Finally I had decided that a prescription of -7.50D should be about the strongest prescription I could choose, and when I got these glasses I was pleased to see that, while they seemed very strong, they were quite wearable as soon as I put them on. Now the lenses looked fairly thick, and I actually enjoyed the comments I occasionally received about me being almost blind.
I should have stopped right there. A prescription of -7.50D is quite a decent prescription, and as my eyes adapted to the power of my lenses I realized that I was now extremely dependent on my glasses. I had even reached the point where it was easier to leave my glasses on to read rather than try to bring my reading material as close to my face as I now had to. But I couldn’t stop. I had fallen in love with my glasses and every time I was alone in my room and I took them off and looked into the blur before putting them back on to perfect clarity I would get so sexually aroused that I would have to masturbate. And the idea of getting even stronger glasses pressed on my mind like I was caught in the ever tightening jaws of a vice.
I went for a prescription of -9.00D before the year was up. It was a bit too much too quickly because I had a hard time wearing them for the first couple of months. That is why I waited until I was halfway between my 18th and 19th birthday before I went for my next jump and then I increased my prescription by -1.50D. I had now used up 4 out of my original 6 prescription slips and just in case I ruined one I went back and made another 6 copies.
I had graduated from high school before I turned 18, and I went on to take a course to become a registered Pharmacist. I was going to graduate by the time I turned 23 and then I was going to have to work in the field as a trainee for at least one more year before I could take my final exams. I was so busy with my studies that I neglected increasing my prescription and I actually reached a point where I discovered I needed to have an eye exam because my prescription had increased on its own. I went to see an eye doctor for only the second time in my life and when I left her office I had a new prescription for -12.00D glasses. This wasn’t much of a jump for me but my eye doctor suggested that perhaps it would be the end of my myopic progression.
I did not fill the prescription as written. I found an online optical that would allow me to order glasses without a prescription and I ordered myself new glasses that were -13.00D. Once I received them I found they were a little strong, but I was able to wear them full time without a problem. I wore these glasses until I graduated, and then, just before graduation I went to see another eye doctor who pronounced my -13.00D glasses as still being perfect for my eyes. I wanted contact lenses to wear for my graduation and I ended up buying a pair of soft lenses. I did wear them for a while, but I didn’t feel complete without my glasses.
I had gotten a job as a trainee in a pharmacy in another city. I liked my -13.00D prescription, but I still wanted even stronger glasses. Much of my online research had indicated to me that people who had a high prescription were prone to things like retina detachments, and myopic macular degeneration and sometimes when your prescription got too strong you couldn’t even be corrected to a point where you could have good enough vision to drive. I didn’t want that to happen to me. But I still wanted to wear stronger glasses.
With the help of some internet friends I came up with a plan. I was going to order new glasses with a prescription of -20.00D and I was going to then order myself a pair of +6D soft contacts that you were supposed to be able to wear 24 hours a day for 30 days. Plus 5.50D contacts could allow a person with good eyes to wear -6.00D glasses so I figured that +6.00D contacts should be good for around -6.75D in a glasses prescription. Even if I was as much as -0.50D over corrected I knew I could handle that. My new contacts and my new glasses came in a couple of days before I was going to be moving and after I moved I did wear GOC full time for the next couple of years. Every month I would go a whole weekend without contacts, and then on the Monday morning I would put my lenses in for the next 4 weeks. I was fortunate in that I took to these lenses perfectly, and not one soul knew the truth except for me.
I really don’t know why I was so obsessed with wearing strong glasses. I had ordered a new pair of glasses in my own prescription to wear around my apartment on the one weekend a month that I went without my contacts, and I had ordered the cheapest, thickest pair I could get. My daily wear -20D glasses were done in a high index lens and they really didn’t seem to be any thicker than my own regular plastic -13D ones. I could easily have had the same feeling with my thick -13D ones if I went out in public wearing them. But I never did.
I needed to order a new 12 month supply of my +6.00D extended wear contacts. I went onto the website of the online supplier that I normally used, and went to order them. Oops, slight problem. Now a prescription must be provided and apparently the prescription would be verified. This was no good. What could I possibly do?
Every day, when I rode the bus to work I had to switch to another bus at one point. Now I had been riding the bus for over 2 years, and every day over the past 2 years I had been noticing an optical store within easy walking distance of where my switch point was. The store looked to be a little run down, much like the rest of the neighborhood and I never saw anyone going in or coming out of it. There was a neon sign in the window that said “Open”, and another one that said “Eye Exams”, so I knew that someone was in the store. Finally I was down to my last pair of 30 day lenses and I was desperate enough to get off the bus at the stop and walk to the optical store.
I pushed open the door, and walked in. It was a bit gloomy inside and as I looked around I saw that the racks were filled with glasses. I casually looked at some of the frames and I could tell that most of the frames were what you would call NOS – new old stock. There were 50’s cat eye frames, 70’s drop temple frames and 80’s frames with the huge eye sizes. Surprisingly there were also frames from more recent years, with the rectangular shaped lenses and the wide temples. The owner of this store had likely kept every frame that he hadn’t sold out on his display racks.
A man in his late 60’s or early 70’s came out from the back room. He was dressed well – wearing a nice pair of slacks and a striped shirt. He walked like he might have been ex-military, as there was no stoop to his shoulders and he gave me a pleasant smile.
“Good afternoon young lady. How many I help you today?” He asked me.
My friends on the internet site had suggested that I should just go ahead and tell the truth. They told me that the worst thing that could possibly happen to me would be that the optometrist would say “No, I can’t help you with that.” So I went ahead and spilled my guts to him. I didn’t tell him about forging a number of prescriptions though, as I thought that could get me in trouble.
“Hmm.” He said as he stroked his beard. “That is not the strangest story I have ever heard, but it does rank right up there. I suppose you realize that it would be illegal for me to do what you are asking me to do and if anyone ever found out I could lose my license. But, I’ll tell you what I will do. I am old enough to retire and I have been planning to sell everything anyway. If you remove your glasses and your contacts I will examine your eyes very carefully, and I will see if I can help you out. Are you satisfied with the prescription you are wearing right now?”
“These are the strongest glasses I can buy on the internet.” I replied.
“That doesn’t answer my question young lady. Would you like to wear stronger glasses?” He asked.
“Yes, yes I would.” I answered quickly.
“Would you allow me to make your new glasses for you?” He asked.
“How long would it be before I could get them? I am on my last pair of 30 day lenses and I have about 2 weeks left before I need to throw them away.” I replied.
“Oh, I could have them for you tonight, but I might have to work past closing time.” He replied.
“Do you take credit cards?’ I asked.
“In this day and age you can’t be in business without taking them.” He responded.
“Well, then what are we waiting for.” I replied.
“You won’t be able to see much for a while after your exam. I will be using drops in your eyes. Maybe we should choose a frame first.” He advised me.
As I looked at the racks my eyes were drawn to a pair of Shuron cats eye frames that were aluminum, with a blue color to them. There were etchings of flowers on the brow and on the temples and the frame fit my face perfectly. I chose that pair for my primary pair. Then, on the 70’s rack I saw a pair of gold colored drop temple wire frames that would be perfect for a strong prescription. The actual lens area was fairly small, but it was surrounded by another wire frame that was, except for the area around the nose, a good 1/8 of an inch away from the frame holding the lens. It was sort of like a frame within a frame and it made the glasses appear larger. So I chose that pair as well along with a more modern pair of rectangular plastic frames with the wide temples that had a bit larger eye size than the normal glasses from the period just before the huge glasses came back in style. Even with only a -20D prescription I could not have gone for any bigger frame.
“I might buy all 3 pairs if the cost isn’t too terribly high.” I told him.
“We will talk about that after we determine your prescription.” He said, and he led me into the back room, as I had my contacts and my glasses out by then.
He did the puff test for glaucoma first and then the drops went into my eyes. He used 2 different kinds, and my eyes really started to feel funny. After about 5 minutes he pulled the phoropter down onto my face and then he adjusted the lenses. I could tell that the prescription was getting a bit closer to what I needed because the big letters projected onto the wall were getting clearer and clearer. Then he made the letters smaller, and he increased the power of the lenses a little more. The smaller the letters got the more minus he gave me and finally he asked me to read him off what the smallest of the three lines said. I managed to get most of the letters correct on my first try. He was quite pleased with the results.
“Which pair of glasses would you like me to finish first?” He asked.
“If you do the more modern pair then it won’t matter if it takes you a couple of days to finish the other ones. But first we need to establish a price.” I replied.
“I can do all three pairs for $500.00. It would cost about the same for one pair anywhere else.” He answered.
I knew he was correct and since the other two pairs were such unusual special frames I told him to go ahead. He suggested that I might want to put my old glasses on while I waited and when I told him that I really couldn’t see through them without my contacts he told me I might be surprised. So I put them on, and I was very surprised. I could see well enough to read one of the old magazines he had in his waiting room, but I really couldn’t see clearly in the distance. What had I done? Or more correctly, what had he done?
As I sat there reading I was anxiously waiting for my first pair of glasses. My heart was pounding with trepidation. Here I was wearing -20D glasses without my plus contacts and they were too weak. What was my prescription now?
Finally he emerged from the back room with my glasses. He placed them on my face and everything became extremely clear. I hadn’t been able to see as well as I was now seeing through these new glasses for ages.
“How are they?” He asked.
“They are just perfect. But tell me, how strong are they?” I asked.
“Your prescription is now -25.00D for each eye.” He answered.
“Minus 25.00D? But how could my eyes have possibly gotten that bad. And isn’t such a high prescription dangerous?” I almost shouted at him.
“In your case the -25.00D prescription is no worse for you than your old prescription. One of the drops I used in your eyes was to dilate the pupils. The other drops were of a drug that was introduced back in the late 1950’s. Back then when people developed cataracts the only option was to remove the cloudy lens and then the patient had to wear very thick plus lenses in their glasses. The glasses they needed were at least +20D and were quite often an even higher power. Many of these patients had to give up driving and their quality of life was greatly diminished.” He said.
“So what did this other drug do?” I questioned.
“First you have to understand how the eye works. There are 3 main components that determine vision. One is eyeball length, and in myopic people the eyeball is generally too long. But sometimes the inner lens, the one removed by cataract surgery has too much plus, and that creates myopia. And the third one is the cornea. The cornea is actually another lens, and if it is too steep it can be a higher plus than it should be and this will also create myopia. The drug I used on you is a very special drug that was developed to be given to patients that had their cataracts removed. This drug thickened the cornea and made it steeper, increasing the plus power to create around -12.00D of myopia and reduce the plus power of the eye with the inner lens removed. I was one of the eye doctors chosen to dispense this drug on a trial basis to see if we could reduce the power of the cataract glasses that the patients had to wear. And it worked. Instead of as high a prescription of +25D we could lower their prescription by as much as 12 diopters so their corrected eyesight was much better. But before we could get approval to use this drug on the ordinary population the procedure for lens implants was perfected and this drug fell by the wayside. In all the years since then you are the first person I have ever considered using it on.” He told me.
I looked around his office and everything was so clear and sharp I could hardly believe it. Here I was looking through lenses that corrected -25D of myopia and my vision was so crisp that it hardly seemed like I was wearing glasses at all. Yes, when I tried to move my eyes away from the center point of the lens my vision blurred a little, but I knew I was going to love these glasses.
“I am really glad that you chose me to experiment on.” I told him.
“Wait until you see the cat’s eye glasses. I have the lenses being finished now.” He said.
“You don’t have to do any more of mine now. I can come back whenever it is convenient for you.” I said.
“I have nothing that I would rather do than finish off your glasses. With the internet and people ordering their glasses online I sometimes sit here for a whole day without a single customer. And I do get a lot of repeat customers for eye exams, but even some of them do not order their glasses from me.” He responded.
He looked at the clock and then told me he had to go back and switch machines. A few minutes later he was back.
“The third pair of lenses is now in the finishing machine. And I have the edger doing the lenses to fit into your cat’s eye glasses.” He said.
He went back into the back again and a few minutes later he came out with the cat’s eye glasses. This time I had my new glasses with the proper prescription on and was able to see the lenses clearly so I could tell that they were definitely myodiscs. The lenses were flat in the front, and they were also done on a plano rear carrier – or so he told me because I didn’t know any of these terms. But they did look to be more than half an inch thick at the thinnest point. I put them on, and he had to bend the temples a little so that they would fit a bit tighter around the back of my ears.
I wore the cat’s eye glasses for a while as he finished the third pair. They were just as comfortable and my vision was as fantastically great as it had been with the first pair. I really liked these glasses because they looked very unusual and stylish. When he brought out the wire framed drop temples and I put them on I was as pleased with them as I had been with the other two pair. I paid the gentleman for all three pairs and I left his shop feeling fabulous. Darkness had fallen, and even in the diminished light my eyesight was superb.
For the next few months I switched glasses frequently. Everyone loved the cat’s eye ones on me, and I also got all sorts of comments on the drop temple ones. Even my regular plastic frames got a number of good comments.
And then I met Jason and you know the rest of the story. I did try to go back to see the same optometrist who had made me my 3 special pairs of glasses when I needed another eye exam, but when I found the optical store again I discovered it was dark and shuttered, with the windows papered over. I have no idea what happened to the older optometrist who was able to help me out by giving me that wonderful increase in my myopia. I would love to have purchased another few pairs from him in my newest prescription, but hopefully he has retired and is enjoying his years in the sun.
Specs4ever Nov 2015
https://vision-and-spex.com/the-girl-who-was-named-after-stevie-nicks-t830.html