When I started school in the first grade I also received my first exposure to people who wore glasses. My teacher wore glasses, and so did 2 of the girls that were in my class. And, because the teacher was a glasses wearer, she made sure that she explained to her students that wearing glasses is not something to be ashamed about. She also gave us a fairly good explanation of various vision defects, and told us how these vision defects could be corrected by the wearing of glasses or contact lenses.
I don’t know if any of the other students were at all interested in what the teacher had been telling us, but I know I was. I can still see Alyssa standing at the front of the class beside the teacher, who explained to us that Alyssa had to wear glasses because she had cataracts as child, and the lenses in her eyes had been removed, which required her to wear rather thick looking lenses that magnified her eyes. And when it was Jasmine’s turn to stand beside the teacher, I was enthralled to learn that the reason why Jasmine’s eyes appeared so small and tiny behind the lenses of her glasses was that Jasmine had been born very nearsighted and could not see much of anything beyond the end of her nose without her glasses. Our teacher was also nearsighted, but she explained that while she could not see very far away without her glasses, her vision was much better than Jasmine’s. I suppose that it was around this time that I became more interested in nearsighted people, and I remember walking around the shopping mall with my mom, looking at people who wore glasses and trying to determine if they were nearsighted or faarsighted. For the most part I think I pretty much guessed correctly.
By grade 3 another one of my female classmates had gotten glasses. I still liked the appearance of the lenses that were in Jasmine’s glasses much better though. Then by grade 5 a couple more of the girls and one of the boys also got glasses. One of the girls needed glasses that looked a little bit like Alyssa’s, in that the lenses magnified her eyes, but only very slightly. Then by grade 6 there were 3 more girls, and another boy who also got glasses. They were all nearsighted. But then at the end of grade 6 Jasmine moved away, so for the rest of my school years I was no longer able to stare at Jasmine, wondering just what she could or could not see without those beautiful thick glasses. For a while I wondered if it would be at all possible to make myself wear glasses, but unfortunately I could not make this happen.
I probably should have become an eye doctor, or an optician, or gone into some other field related to eye care. Instead I went to work for a large multinational private security firm. But the job had some perks. I was often involved in searching for missing persons, so I frequently needed to do a lot of research. Sometimes I would get a little off track with my business related research, and I found I was spending a lot of my time on myopia research. Having been born in 1975, I was right in the midst of the computer generation, and I was very familiar with search engines. I also knew that not everything you find on the internet is true, but rather must be taken with a grain of sand.
Since I couldn’t become nearsighted myself, I felt that the next best thing would be to marry someone who was reasonably myopic. When I was researching myopia I discovered that having 2 parents that were myopic meant that your child had a 1 in 3 chance of being myopic. But I was not nearsighted, so if I married a myopic wife, then at the best I would have a 1 in 5 chance of having a myopic child. Still, this was a lot better than having neither parent being myopic, because in that scenario a child had only a 1 in 40 chance of being myopic. So, I went searching for a nearsighted lady to marry.
Of course, one can’t just advertise for a nearsighted wife. I suppose that this might be possible in the future, but in the year 2000, this just wasn’t an option. And, let’s face reality here. Just because a lady has one quality that appeals to you, it does not mean that a relationship can be built on this factor. So, my search was going to have to be narrowed down to include a nearsighted woman that I liked, respected, and actually loved..
Fortunately by this time there were far more women who didn’t mind being seen wearing their glasses. There was a period of time, back before high index lenses and smaller frames, when even a pair of -5D glasses looked to be pretty thick. So for a number of years most women wore contact lenses in public. But once the lenses got thinner, and when these thinner lenses were placed in frames with the smaller eye sizes than were popular in the 80’s and early 90’s, a -10D lens looked as thin as a -5D did previously. That meant that now there were a lot more women who chose to wear glasses, and this meant there was a lot more ladies for me to choose from.
Further internet research on my part indicated that people of Asian heritage were more likely to be nearsighted. The discovery of a website based in Taiwan showed me that this was true, because a surprising number of young ladies that posted pictures to this website appeared to have substantial minus prescriptions. These revelations lead me to ask for a posting to our office in Taiwan, and I was pleased when my request was granted. My new job would take me to Bangkok, where I would be in charge of our office for the next 2 years.
During the duration of my posting I traveled extensively within Asia. One evening in Singapore I met a young lady who appeared to have all the qualifications I was looking for. She was very pretty. She spoke flawless English, and was well educated. And she was quite shortsighted – probably wearing around -15D lenses in her wide temple, plastic framed glasses. I decided that this lady was going to see a lot of me if she was willing.
And Sue Li was willing. I spent a lot of time on the weekends traveling to Singapore, and when I wasn’t able to go to Singapore, Sue often came to Bangkok to be with me. Of course I met her parents, and her brother and her sister as well. It was a treat for me to see that her mother and her sister were also high myopes, and her mother wore lenses that had to be somewhere in the low -20D range. Her father and her brother had prescriptions that were in the range of -10D, so with that sort of family background it would not surprise anyone if our children were nearsighted. As my posting in Thailand came closer and closer to the 2 year mark I asked Sue to marry me, and I was thrilled when she accepted. We were married in Singapore, and since my next posting was going to be in London, England I was able to modify my visa to allow my wife to accompany me.
We arrived in England in the spring of 2003, and established a home in London. Living here was expensive and Sue wanted to go to work to help with our finances, but she was not able to get a visa to allow her to work in England. However we managed to survive, and Sue took some more university courses so that she could get a masters degree, which would help her with her job prospects when we returned to America.
Sue hadn’t wanted to get pregnant while we were in England, as she wanted our child to be born in the States, but I assured her that a child born overseas to an American parent would not have any problem with their citizenship, so finally she relented and we decided to start our family. We had been in England for almost 2 years when our daughter Melinda was born, and the company gave me a choice. I could either remain in the UK for 2 more years, or I could accept a posting to San Francisco. California wasn’t my favorite area of the country, but after a discussion with Sue, we decided that we would take this posting, and Sue would be able to find a job and help with our finances.
So, with a 6 month old baby, Sue and I moved to San Francisco. We were shocked at how expensive things were there, and we were reluctant to purchase a home that we could barely afford. So we searched for, and finally found a place that we could rent, albeit at a higher price than I would have liked.
Sue did find a job, and we were fortunate enough to also find a day care that would accept babies to look after at a reasonable price. For the next couple of years we socked our money away.
I had read on the internet that babies born in the summer were more inclined to be nearsighted, and I had also read that children who slept with a night light were also more inclined to be nearsighted. I had carefully planned Sue’s pregnancy to coincide with Melinda being born in June, and after Melinda was born I made sure that there was always a night light burning in her room. The articles that I had read were not conclusive studies in any way, but I figured that there might possibly be some truth to them, and I was going to take any advantage I could find. I wanted my daughter to be nearsighted, but I also wanted it to happen naturally, without me forcing it.
Melinda was around 30 months when I noticed that she seemed to pulling things closer to her eyes to look at them than I thought was proper. So, I suggested to Sue that possibly Melinda might be a bit myopic, and maybe she should have her eyes examined. Sue took Melinda to an ophthalmologist that was recommended to her by our pediatric physician. And sure enough, Melinda was a bit nearsighted. When Sue came home she had a prescription for Melinda that showed that Melinda needed -1.50D for both eyes. But the doctor had suggested that we could wait for another 6 months and another exam before getting Melinda glasses if we wished. Sue and I discussed this, and I convinced Sue that if Melinda needed glasses, we should get them for her now so that we did not retard her development.
Sue went along with my suggestion, and together we went to the nearby mall, where we chose a nice child’s frame for Melinda that had the cable temples so they glasses wouldn’t slip away from her nose, or fall off at an inopportune time. When the optician placed the new glasses on Melinda’s face I noticed that Melinda seemed to be excited to be able to see so much better. I mentioned this to Sue, and she reluctantly agreed that this appeared to be the case.
I was never going to do anything to increase Melinda’s prescription myself. That was not something a loving father would ever do. But I did want Melinda to require stronger glasses and possibly end up with a prescription similar to her mothers. So, I made sure that Melinda had another eye examination after 6 months. Her doctor didn’t think that Melinda needed to have her eyes examined this frequently, but he reluctantly agreed with me that myopia can increase rapidly in young children, and that it is better for children to be fully corrected. After that we took Melinda in for an eye exam on a 6 month interval.
It seemed that for most of the time Melinda was able to go a full year without an increase. Sue and the doctor tried to convince me that Melinda could easily go a year between exams, but I stood my ground. The following year Melinda had doubled her prescription and had gone up by -1.50D to -3.00D. After another year she went up a full diopter and was now wearing glasses that were -4.00D. I was almost ready to let Sue and the doctor change my mind to let Melinda only come once a year, when six months later, on her 5th birthday, Melinda was discovered to require another large increase of -1.50D, which gave her a new prescription of -5.50D for her glasses. Then she had a jump of -0.75 at her next 6 month exam and another similar increase on her 6th birthday. Now her glasses were -7.00D, and since Sue and I hadn’t wanted to spend the extra money for hi index lenses, the optician had made Melinda’s latest lenses with a flat front so they would be a little thinner.
Three years previously Sue had gotten pregnant again, and we were blessed with a baby brother for Melinda. Curtis had been born in the winter, and when he was a baby he did not sleep with a night light on. This was all according to my plan, because I wanted to see if there was any truth in the theory that too much exposure to light caused myopia. If Curtis eventually wore glasses it would be completely due to genetics.
Sue Li’s mother had come over to be with us during the latter part of Sues pregnancy, and she stayed for 6 months, until Curtis was almost 5 months old. She was a wonderful help for Sue, and I didn’t mind having her around. I loved to watch her eyes darting everywhere behind the strong lenses of her -20D glasses. I couldn’t help but think that I would love it if Sue reached the same level of myopia that her mom had someday. Sue had needed a couple of small increases between the time we got married and Curtis’s birth, but Melinda’s birth hadn’t caused any noticeable increase in her prescription. So we were a little surprised when Sue really needed new glasses after Curtis was born. Her prescription had jumped almost -2.00D, and now her new glasses, with their prescription of -18D, were only slightly weaker than her mother’s. I loved watching Sue wearing her new glasses. She had not seemed to bring things really close to her face to read before she had this last prescription increase, but after getting her new glasses I couldn’t help but notice that Sue was bringing her reading material fairly close to her eyes to read.
Once Melinda had gotten her new glasses with the -7.00D prescription I began to notice that she was copying her mother, and bringing most of her reading material fairly close to her face. I did nothing to attempt to break her from this habit, and I was almost positive that this practice would help Melinda increase her prescription. Her prescription didn’t seem to climb much, and she didn’t have an increase until she was 9. Curtis was 6, and so far, according to the doctor, he didn’t seem to need any correction. At this time Melinda required another -1D, making her new glasses -8D. This time I let myself be talked into getting a higher index lens for Melinda’s new glasses, since she had gone for 3 years without an increase.
Melinda continued her bad habit of reading too close, just like her mom. This hadn’t seemed to cause an increase for her, and as far as Sue Li went, her prescription had remained right around the -18D mark for the past 6 years. I suspected that if Sue now had any more increases they would only be minor ones.
Melinda did require another increase a couple of years later. Then when she was 15 she needed another increase, which brought her up to -10.50D. A half a year later she needed -1.50D more, and then just after she turned 16 and wanted to get her driver’s license she required an additional -2D, bringing her up to -14D. I suspected that she could easily reach the same prescription as her grandmother had by the time her progression stopped.
Curtis had gotten his first pair of glasses when he turned 13. He had a very mild prescription, with only -1.00D in each eye. However, he had -1.50D of astigmatism in his right eye, and -2.00D in his left eye. So once he got his glasses he wore them full time. This showed to me that his myopia was genetic, but I still wasn’t completely convinced that the night light and the summer birth had been what caused Melinda’s myopia. After all, both her mom and grandmother had pretty high myopia, so it is very conceivable that both my children had become myopic because of genetics. I do feel that the lack of a night light and having been born in the winter probably benefited Curtis, and reduced the strength of his myopia. Since Sue and her mother had no major problems with the degree of their myopia I felt that Melinda would probably also go through life without having any serious problems.
Specs4ever written in Aug 2012.