I have enjoyed writing this story, which will end with this, the fourth part. I have lots of ideas that would allow me to continue, but the timeline prevents me from doing so. The original part 1 was written in the fall of 2015, soon after a story about the woman who blinded herself because of BIID. Our friend Bobby was interviewed for a news article and he gave some very good answers and insights into the world of BIID. With that idea in my mind I wrote part 1. The story was well received and I was urged to continue it, which I did in parts 2 and 3. But now we are into part 4 and we are now almost 16 years into the future. I don’t feel comfortable writing what is supposed to be a real time story into what will certainly be a changing world. As I sit here writing this a week has passed since the terrorist bombings and attacks in Paris France took place. What other changes will we see during the supposedly continued timeline of this tale? What effects would these changes have on any story that is written into the future? Will people even wear glasses in 15 or 20 years? I just don’t feel comfortable continuing this. Please forgive me for this, and if you are reading this story in 2030, please accept it for what it is – a fictional tale.
When Joanne passed away from cervical cancer her death hit me very hard. She was only a couple of years older than me and she was never going to see her beautiful, severely nearsighted daughter Sasha blossom into a woman. Friends had been hard for me to relate to when I was growing up and was in high school because of my over powering desires to wear strong glasses. I had a number of girls I hung around with, but there was not one of them that I could confess my inner feelings to, and as a result I was known as being a bit of a loner.
I was very grateful to Andrew, my husband, who on learning that Joanne was seriously ill told me that we could easily accommodate Sasha and Joanne in our home. We had a 4 bedroom house, with one bedroom that was designed more or less as a separate entity. When we bought the house our realtor called it a granny suite, as the bedroom and attached bathroom was on the first floor and was separate from the balance of the house. We made this into a bedroom for Joanne, and Sasha got the smaller of the 2 remaining bedrooms on the second floor with Andrew and me. When our twins were born, shortly before Joanne went to hospice and eventually passed away, we used the larger of the 2 spare bedrooms as the nursery.
When Joanne passed away I no longer had anyone I could call a close friend. Until the twins turned 2, and I was able to leave them with a sitter, I did the bookkeeping and billing for Andrew by working from the house. Sasha was almost 10, and while she couldn’t be left alone with the twins, she was a fantastic help to me by keeping the twins occupied while I did the necessary bookkeeping to keep the money flowing in. Andrew had hired a receptionist for the office when I had been pregnant, but in the almost 3 years I had been home he had already gone through 2 of them and the most recent one had just given her notice. Sasha was in school full time, and we were fortunate enough to find a daycare for the twins that would take them 5 mornings a week, so I was now able to go to the office and act as the receptionist again until 1pm. Andrew then managed without me for the rest of the day.
I easily fell back into the receptionist’s job. I had been doing it before the twins were born, and I missed conversing with my fellow BIID sufferers. I did not hide the fact that my strong glasses had come about because I had gotten my eyes operated on, and as a result of my opening up to them new patients were always more forthcoming with me that they would have been with Andrew. That was how I met Caroline, a fairly attractive young lady who was around 25 years of age, and who already wore quite a strong minus prescription in her glasses.
Caroline was the only daughter of a fairly wealthy local businessman. There was no shortage of money in her life, and it appeared that Daddy bought his daughter anything she wanted. The only thing his money couldn’t buy was good eyesight for his daughter, but he didn’t know half of the truth. Caroline had a very serious case of BIID, and she wanted nothing more than to be completely blind. She and her best friend had been going out blindsimming ever since she was 16 years old and her now severe myopia had been developed by the wearing of strong minus contact lenses since she was 12 years of age. Caroline and her mother had been visiting Europe the summer she was 12, and Caroline found that minus contacts could be purchased openly in grocery stores there. She brought a rather decent supply of -4D and -6D contact lenses back home with her, and started wearing the -4D contacts all the time. Before she was 13 Caroline had changed up to the -6D contacts, and she wore them until she turned 14. She then discovered a contact lens supplier who would ship to her without a prescription, and she then increased her contact lens prescription by -2D every year after that. When she and her friend Kathy discovered that other people went around pretending to be blind, and that it was called blindsimming she was 16 and was wearing -10D contact lenses. Although she was very happy to be play acting at being blind she still continued to increase her contact lens prescription by -2D every year. By the time she was 19 and her mother passed away her contact lens prescription was -16D and her glasses prescription, if she had purchased a pair, would have been right around -20.00D.
Caroline’s parents knew by then that she was nearsighted and wore contact lenses, but since Caroline had never worn glasses around the house they had no idea just how strong her glasses actually had been getting over the years. Caroline continued increasing her contact lens prescription by her usual -2D a year for the next 2 years and once she started to wear -20D contacts at the age of 21 she realized that she could go no higher because she was now wearing the strongest contact lenses that her online supplier could supply her with. When she had worn the -20D contacts for almost a year Caroline ended up with an eye infection and could no longer wear contacts so her dad’s driver took her to the first ophthalmologist she could get an appointment with. He was horrified that Caroline had an extremely strong minus prescription and she didn’t even own a pair of glasses. He found that her glasses were going to have to be -27.00D and since she needed such a strong prescription Caroline was going to have to go without any correction for up to 2 weeks before he could get her a proper pair of glasses to wear.
Caroline would have been happy to go around for a week without glasses, because her uncorrected vision was now almost the same as if she were blind. But she knew that, while her dad knew that she wore contacts, she realized that he needed to see her wearing glasses so that he could see just how bad her eyesight actually was. Caroline paid the doctor a lot of extra money to have the expensive very high index lenses she needed airfreighted overnight from the specialty lens department in Germany, and she also paid extra to have the lenses put into a frame as soon as the lenses arrived. That way she would have her glasses within 3 days.
Not having glasses for 3 days didn’t stop Caroline from going out with Kathy, her friend that she always went blindsimming with. Kathy was now almost completely blind as she had retinitis pigmentosa and at this point all she could see was a very small area directly in front of her. She told Caroline that it was like looking through a tunnel. She was very sensitive to light and the glasses she did wear were heavily tinted. She was also quite nearsighted as well and, while she was a very close friend to Caroline she did have a hard time understanding why Caroline actually wanted to be blind. Kathy would have given anything to be able to see as well as Caroline could, even if she too had to wear very strong glasses.
Caroline came to our office on the recommendation of the ophthalmologist that she had just been to see. He was a friend of Andrew’s and somehow he recognized that Caroline had an urge to wear stronger and stronger glasses. His suspicions about her had been aroused when she was unable to tell him the names of any of her previous eye doctors as he knew that with such a strong minus prescription she had to have seen at least one other doctor. He had checked around with some of the other doctors in the city and found that Caroline had not seen any of them. Although it might have been possible that he had missed calling the one doctor that Caroline had actually been going to, he decided to tell Caroline that he had discovered that she had never seen an eye doctor and that she had created her own high myopia. Caroline took the bluff, and she ended up telling the doctor the truth along with admitting to him that she really wanted to be blind and that she often went out blindsimming
Caroline did make an appointment with Andrew to come to our office. One of the things that I do for Andrew is to prescreen patients. If I didn’t feel that a prospective patient suffered from BIID I would still have the patient see Andrew, who would then tell the patient that they did not fit into his area of expertise. After Caroline told me her story about wearing progressively stronger contact lenses from the age of 12 right up until she was 21 and started wearing the -20D contacts that eventually lead to her being prescribed -27.00D glasses about a year later, I could immediately tell that she was a potential patient for Andrew. I asked her a few more questions, and I found that she actually aspired to be completely blind at some point in the future. She and her friend Kathy had taken lessons in how to read and write in Braille and they were quite proficient at using it. Kathy had no other option but to use Braille and it was quite a help to her that Caroline had wanted to learn it as well.
When I first met Caroline the twins were almost 4 and I had just turned 32. Caroline was 8 years younger than I was and after her first couple of appointments I recognized my younger self in her. As I had said before, there was no shortage of money in her dad’s bank account, and she wanted to see Andrew every week, but Andrew didn’t feel that he could help her unless he had a couple of weeks between visits, so Caroline started a routine of coming in bi weekly. And she would also come in at least half, sometimes a full hour earlier than her appointment time just to talk to me. I had told her very shortly after her first visit that I too suffered from BIID and I had my eyes operated on so I could be very nearsighted and required thick glasses. Caroline had been fascinated by the very thick double myodisc lenses I wore in my half rimless frames and she was quite disappointed when I told her that the lens blanks I had were no longer made. She wanted to spend the money to have the manufacturer make more of them just for the two of us but I didn’t think that would be possible.
Before long Caroline became almost a friend to me more than a patient of Andrew’s. She had become a regular visitor at our house on weekends and often brought her friend Kathy along. They loved the house, and Caroline thought that Sasha was the sweetest young lady she had ever met. She and Sasha traded glasses and compared their vision. Sasha couldn’t quite see through Caroline’s lenses, but Caroline could see quite well when she had Sasha’s glasses on. Soon after that Caroline showed up wearing new glasses and she told me that she was now wearing the same prescription as Sasha had. I don’t know how she had managed to do that, but with enough money anything is possible.
After Caroline fully adapted to wearing the same -28.50D prescription as Sasha she wanted to go even higher, and purchased a pair of glasses that had a -30.00D prescription. It really surprised me that Caroline was able to increase her prescription by wearing glasses that were stronger than she needed at her age. I had known her for 2 years now and she had recently celebrated her 25th birthday. Unfortunately Caroline was having problems at home. Her father wanted to retire and he had been grooming her to take over the leadership of his companies. Her dad was now 77 and was not in very good health. There was a 25 year difference between the ages of her parents and he had taken the death of Caroline’s mother quite hard, as she had only been 50 when she passed away. This had really shaken him up a lot, but what had really thrown him for a loop was the first time he saw Carolyn wearing her strong -27D myodiscs. To him, the obviously powerful glasses that his daughter now needed indicated a weakness in Caroline that, to him, indicated that she was not suitable to run the company. As she increased her prescription over the next couple of years he decided that instead of turning the company over to her, he would sell the company. Caroline and I discussed this a number of times, and Caroline didn’t seem to be too upset about her dad’s decision.
“After all, I am his only child and I will still get his money. Why should I try to increase his fortune? I can invest the money and live off the investments without even making a dent in the capitol. And let’s face it. If I were to take over the company I would likely have to go back to wearing contact lenses so that people didn’t think I would be a real pushover because of my poor eyesight.” Caroline told me.
It took a number of visits with Andrew before Caroline was able to temper down her desire to be totally blind. I think that my being honest with her by telling her that total blindness would affect her life in a very negative way might have helped. But she still wanted to have her eyes operated on to make her even more nearsighted than she already was. Finally Andrew arranged a consultation for Caroline with the same surgeon that had operated on my eyes. He examined her very carefully and he advised her that with her already high myopia as a base he could bring her to such a high minus prescription that only a handful of people in the whole world would be able to wear it. He also advised her of the potential dangers of such surgery. And he also warned her that he wanted her to have a stable prescription for at least 2 years before he would even consider doing anything to her eyes to increase her prescription.
Caroline was not as upset about this as I thought she would be. As she explained it to me she really didn’t want to have anything done surgically until after her dad passed away. But she did want to increase her prescription and she managed to convince me to lend her the first pair of -31,50D myodiscs I had gotten after my own eyes were operated on. After 3 or 4 months she reached a point where she felt very comfortable wearing these glasses and then she asked me to lend her the next pair I had been prescribed after my eyes had settled in from the operation. She loved the really thick -32.50D myodiscs and she wore them whenever possible, but she did switch to wearing my blended myodiscs whenever she was around her dad. The blended myodiscs didn’t make the wearer look nearly as blind as the really thick plastic lensed double myodiscs did.
Caroline wore my -32.50 D glasses for the next year, and before she turned 27 she asked me to loan her my -34D glasses, which I did. Her own prescription was actually still increasing at a fairly rapid pace. But, she really wanted to go even higher. By this time her friend Kathy had reached a point where she was completely blind from the RP and could only distinguish light from dark. Kathy and Caroline lived together in a fairly expensive condominium that was right on the main subway line, so they had no problem getting around. As well, Caroline had a driver available any time she wanted to go to places the subway or the streetcar wouldn’t take her. I wondered about their living arrangement a little. Neither of the girls had ever talked about having any boyfriends. However, they had never shown any of the signs of affection that a couple would normally show in public. In reality it wouldn’t have mattered a bit to me if they were living in a same sex relationship as long as they were happy. I did worry though that since Caroline was Kathy’s eyes if Caroline destroyed her own eyesight would this create problems for Kathy somewhere down the road?
It turned out that I did not need to worry. Kathy had met a guy who had a fetish for blind girls. Yes, there are some people around that do have a strong attraction towards people who are blind, just like some people like people – not necessarily of the opposite sex - that are extremely nearsighted – or farsighted. And there are people who are attracted to other people who are handicapped. There are even people who like to go swimming fully dressed and then wear their wet clothing around until it dries out. There are so many fetishes out there that it is no wonder that in some cases this has turned into many cases of BIID where people are harming themselves to fulfil their desires to have a handicap.
I could understand this very well because of my own experiences. Andrew, on the other hand, did not seem to have any fetishes. Certainly he had married me, and I had ruined my eyesight to the point where, even with my glasses, I couldn’t get to any more than 20/40 for my best visual acuity. But I was able to function quite well and now I wore my strong glasses every waking minute, I was completely at ease with myself. He dealt with quite a large patient base who suffered from BIID, and he had helped a number of other attractive ladies that wanted to become extremely nearsighted, but he had never seemed to show the least bit of interest in any of them. I felt very secure that Andrew loved me for me, and that my strong glasses were just something that he accepted that I needed. He did kid me once in a while about how blind I was, but it was never done in a hurtful manner.
After Kathy and Fred became a couple I asked Caroline if she was interested in any one particular guy. Her answer to me was that she had corresponded with a number of men on the internet who seemed very interested in her, but they all had wet dreams over her eyesight. She then told me that she thought she had better wait for a while until she decided exactly to what point she wanted to take her vision to. She also told me that she had been back to her ophthalmologist and had ordered a new pair of glasses with a much stronger prescription of -36.00D, and he had reluctantly gone along with her request.
When Caroline got her new -36D glasses I had a hard time telling that they were any stronger until I tried them on. The minus correction was only -1D more than my own glasses, but they still really pulled on my eyes. I didn’t like it much, and when I took them off after only a few minutes of wear it took a minute or two for my eyes to go back to normal. But Caroline loved the feeling. I could, when looking at her face head on, tell that her eyes seemed to be sunk back deeper into her head, but I guess that was just the extra minification. That day she told me that her dad was getting worse and worse, and the doctors didn’t think he would last out the year. After he passed away she said that she would then decide on what she wanted to finally do.
Sasha was now 17. She had been very fortunate and had not required any large increases during puberty. Her prescription had climbed a little when she was 13, but the increase was only -0.50D. Then the doctor had added another -0.50D when she was 14, and recently she had another increase up to -30D. We hoped that her prescription would stay right there, because that was, while lower than Caroline and mine, a strong prescription for an attractive 17 year old girl to have. Caroline was funny. When Sasha was getting new glasses Caroline insisted on paying for the newest thinnest lenses that could be purchased for Sasha. Now Sasha’s glasses looked to be almost a normal pair of glasses and if you hadn’t known where to look for the blended circle you would not have realized how strong her prescription was. As Caroline explained to me, Sasha didn’t want to wear strong glasses like we did, and she needed the expensive lenses so that she could look just like a regular girl who happened to need glasses. I could understand that, and although Andrew and I had the money to spend on whatever Sasha needed in life I let Caroline pay for Sasha’s glasses because she wanted to, and she could easily afford to.
The twins were now 10 and doing well in school. Neither of them had shown any indication that they were going to develop any myopia, and both Andrew and I hoped that their eyes would stay this way. I had no myopia when I was younger and neither did Andrew, so they were not genetically disposed. No, the only thing in their genetic background was my propensity for BIID and I certainly hoped that they didn’t develop that.
Caroline’s father passed away, and after the dust settled she was left with a rather impressive portfolio and a sizeable bank account. I had hoped that she would decide to end her quest to be even more nearsighted and stay with the high myopia that she had developed on her own, but it seemed that she was going to be going back to the same ophthalmologist that had assessed her previously to have another assessment. When he finished with the assessment Caroline was advised that her -36D glasses were now perfect for her and that once she went another 6 months with that same prescription he could schedule her for the first operation that she was considering. Caroline was taking my advice to increase her already substantial myopia in small steps, the first of which was going to be laser surgery on her eyes to increase the plus power of the lens in her cornea. This was the same type of procedure I had done to my eyes, but at the time I had also had an implantable contact lens with a +15D power placed inside my eyes to give me the high amount of myopia I desired. Since Caroline was already stating off with a rather high prescription of -36D the laser sculpturing of her cornea would, according to her ophthalmologist, add about -12D to -14D, giving her a prescription of possibly as high as -50D.
Both Andrew and I tried to talk Caroline out of having this procedure done, however her mind was made up. She had, if you remember, originally wanted to be totally blind like her friend Kathy and only the fact that she had been able to continue to increase her own prescription substantially had prevented her from going to that extreme – at least while her dad was still alive. But now he was gone her desire for even more myopia and possibly total blindness had resurfaced.
The doctor made Caroline wait the full 2 years before he would do the laser surgery. When he had finished both eyes it took a couple of days for things to settle down before he was willing to do a refraction on Caroline’s eyes. Caroline was now living on her own, as Kathy and Fred had gotten their own place to live so I volunteered to help Caroline when she needed to go back to her doctor. When he checked her eyesight after a couple of days of healing it turned out that Caroline had achieved a prescription of -49.00D. The doctor actually wanted to wait a week or two more before he ordered Caroline a pair of glasses, but he knew she had the funds to pay for whatever she needed so he went along with her wishes and ordered her new glasses. The lab that turned out prescriptions this high was located in Czechoslovakia and Caroline paid an astronomical price to have her lenses made and shipped by air within 3 days. No other lab was willing to shape these lenses to fit into a frame so Caroline was forced to accept whatever frame the lab in Czechoslovakia had in stock. They had sent her doctor pictures and frame numbers of some of the frames they had available, and a few of them were similar, possibly identical, frames to what the doctor had, so the doctor and I managed to find a couple of frames that looked pretty good on Caroline and we advised the lab to fit the lenses to whichever frame they could.
Caroline was, to all intents and purposes, blind. At -50D she would have had a focal point of 20mm or about ¾” from the tip of her cornea, and being only a -49 wouldn’t have made a bit of difference in what she could see without glasses. It was a darned good thing that she had done as much blindsimming as she had because she was able to function in the blur. I figured that this would be the end of her desire to have even stronger glasses.
Caroline was actually very happy with her new glasses, The myodisc circles of her -49D glasses were about 22mm across on the front surface of her lenses, and about 20mm in diameter for the circles in the back of her lens. I have no idea how the power was distributed, but since the front circles were a little bigger than the rear I suspect that the front circles contained just a little bit less power than the rear ones did. I was a little surprised that Caroline could actually function quite well with such a strong prescription. She couldn’t possibly see well enough to drive, but then again she had never driven so that wasn’t something she would miss. Other than having to bring things closer to the front face of her glasses she didn’t seem to have a lot of trouble seeing well enough to get around. Oh, she couldn’t read a menu board in a fast food restaurant, but I was pretty much at my limit for doing that. Sasha, who still had a -5D lower prescription than I did had her troubles seeing what some of those menu boards said as well, and she much preferred the vision that she had with her contact lenses in.
Andrew and I had purchased contacts for Sasha when she turned 18 and her visual acuity was much better when she was wearing them, so she did wear them a lot, but she was a very intelligent girl and she heeded our warnings about not wearing contacts too much. I only hoped that her myopia would not get any worse than it already was, but she was going into her second year at university and her work load would likely get a lot higher as she continued with her studies. We had discussed her myopia, and she knew that I had my eyes operated on to attain the high degree of myopia that I had. She knew that she had been born severely myopic, and that reading with her material held close to her eyes when she was wearing her full distance prescription could possibly increase her myopia. When Sasha had her first prescription increase from -28.50D to -29.00D at age 13 I had suggested to her that she would be doing her eyes a big favor by wearing her old glasses for any extended periods of reading, and she had done that ever since. Now when she had a lot of studying to do she wore +1.00D over the counter reading glasses if she didn’t want to remove her contacts. We hoped that her diligence would prevent her prescription from getting any higher.
About 6 months after Caroline had gotten her -49.00D glasses her ophthalmologist fine-tuned and increased her script to -50D. It was not unusual for patients who had laser surgery to require a bit of fine tuning afterwards. The only unusual part with Caroline was that her laser surgery had been done to increase her script.
Caroline was satisfied with her newest glasses for a while. But then she started talking about having a lens implant to increase her myopia even further. I know I was crazy for having my own perfect eyesight destroyed by this surgery, but Caroline had started her surgery with a stronger prescription than I had attained. I had been very satisfied with the amount of myopia I had been given, and I had no desire to take my prescription even higher. Yes, I could still have my inner lenses removed and could have my prescription increased by having much stronger plus lenses inserted in place of my natural lenses, This would likely increase my myopia up to around -55.00D. But I was satisfied with my slightly better than 20/40 visual acuity. Caroline only had a visual acuity of around 20/70, and that was only if the lighting conditions were perfect. And I had a fall back in case my eyesight began to cause me problems. I could first have the implantable contact lens removed, reducing my prescription by almost 20D. Then if necessary I could have my inner lens removed and replaced with a lens that would correct the myopia that had been created by my laser surgery. Since my own eyesight had gotten a bit worse since my operations I figured I might have -3.50D or maybe -4.00D of real myopia, and that could also be taken into account when the parameters for a lens replacement were considered and I could theoretically be left with 20/20 vision again. But that thought scared me, and I wasn’t ever planning to have that done. I loved being very shortsighted and was thrilled to put my glasses on every morning.
I finally convinced Caroline that she really would not be solving her BIID problem by having implantable contact lenses placed in her eyes and ending up with a prescription of around -70D. With both Andrew and I working on her every couple of weeks when she came in for her bimonthly sessions she gradually came to the conclusion that she was in reality blind if she took her glasses off. And the glasses she wore were very obviously an extremely strong prescription, so she had no trouble having people believe her when she told them that she was functionally blind. I had also gotten Kathy involved in our discussions to try to convince Caroline that she had gone far enough and when Kathy told Caroline that she would no longer consider her a friend if she took her eyesight to the next level of blindness I think Caroline took the message to heart. At least she thought about it for a few weeks before she finally told Andrew that she had gone far enough. I wasn’t a hundred percent certain that Caroline would be willing to stop, but after a few months I finally came to believe that she had accepted her very high myopia as being close enough to being blind to satisfy her BIID urges.
Specs4ever Nov 2015
https://vision-and-spex.com/the-pull-of-biid-part-4-monica-continues-t714.html