My eyes through the years

Our school did annual eye exams although I’m not sure at what age/grade they started. I do remember 6th grade. I was told I was near-sighted and needed glasses. Horrors! I felt ugly enough with buck teeth and dark natural circles under my eyes. But when I got them, I suddenly realized there was a clock on the wall in the front of the classroom. I’d never noticed it before. That meant I could sit in the back of the room instead of the front row and my shy self liked that.

They made this mistake of telling me I only needed them part-time. That meant by junior high, I rarely wore them. I’m not sure when I started wearing them full-time. I don’t have many photos of me during my early 20s – most were of me and my kids and I made albums of those photos for them when they left home.

I do know I was wearing them all the time by my late 20s. But I also managed to eke out enough money from the budget to try soft contacts for the first time. I was living in Iowa and the girl I was working with had contacts. When I got home that night and went to take them out, I couldn’t find one. I panicked and called my friend who talked me through finding it up under my lid. A common occurrence.

I loved the simple things, like being able to see my hair being cut. Without contacts, I would have to put on my glasses before I could see it. But by my late 30s, a problem arrived. I wore my glasses on the weekends to give my eyes a rest. I did the same in the evenings. But I still constantly had red eyes. I made an appointment with an optometrist and found out I had extremely dry eyes. I had to return to glasses full-time. My husband at the time told me that was good because he preferred me with glasses. Go figure!

All through my 40s and 50s, I had to get new glasses every year. I had moved into progressive lenses, not inexpensive. But my vision kept changing and new glasses were needed.

One aggravation was sunglasses. Prescription sunglasses were very pricey but I did get them one year when there was a special promotion. But I found having to swap them out all the time was a pain. Then they came out with clip-ons. Yay! Lightweight and cheap – that worked well for me. I still have a stash of them in different sizes.

Of course with age comes cataracts. I was in my mid-40s when they started, tiny and not at all bothersome. By my mid-60s, it was time to get them taken care of. I was happy with the way things were. As I got older, my vision changed and I could read and work on the computer without glasses (thank you far-sightedness for helping out). I only needed my glasses for distance.

I had several options for cataract surgery that could correct both my astigmatism (I call it ghosting – everything has a slight shadow) and my vision. But the only method covered fully by Medicare was single vision – distance. Sigh…

So now my distance vision is excellent (although I still have astigmatism), but anything closer than six feet is blurry (and the closer they are, the blurrier they are). I’ve opted for reading glasses. I have dozens in two strengths. I have backups for my favorites. I’ve tried the multi-focal and those work okay and are good in the sunglass versions.