So, I went to my new optician today and hope to the goddesses that he’s right about his diagnosis, as at the end of the appointment I was $1000 lighter than when I went in.
Having had a long discussion about the sort-of-double vision I get when I’m tired, and when I’m reading…
…and the fact it’s been around since I was in my 20s, but it seems to be getting worse…
…and the fact that the prism added for strabismus (or ‘squint’, or ‘turned eye’) helped for the past two years, but seems to have stopped helping…
…and that it gets better if I take my glasses off…
…and many other things…
…and then following about 90 minutes of eye examination (although that did include the check for glaucoma and macular degeneration) he concluded that what I actually have is accommodative esotropia. Which basically means I get crosseyed, very slightly, as I try and near-focus. At far focus my eyes do something else (I forget what). As a result, my brain has, it seems stopped bothering with focusing my left eye (which is probably why I get headaches when I spend the day at home dinking), which was very weird. That seems to have been a result of adding prism, as I never had a problem focusing it before but today even with much tweaking of my lenses, the left was vaguely fuzzy.
That should, hopefully, get better with this new prescription.
The optician is clearly someone who very much enjoys his job (I’d recommend him to people, so long as you’re happy with blunt cheerful honesty about how terrible your eyes are), so that part at least was actually kinda enjoyable. Insofar as a sight test can ever be enjoyable.
But I’ve gone from a relatively simple prescription to a super complicated multifocal one which, to top it off, I need two of. That’s because I really, really need sunglasses to reduce the probability of me getting macular degeneration. I did once have “transitions” lenses – which they also sell, but my last wearing of them resulted in me having glasses that went dark in the cold. Since then I’ve been unwilling to retry them. So I had to buy two pairs of the painfully expensive glasses (although the sun glasses were marginally less expensive lens wise, as they don’t do the really good quality multifocals in sunglasses yet).
As a ‘bonus’, they recommended larger glasses, because to accommodate the multifocal variation they really need more glass-estate. So I’m back to my teenage-owl glasses look, which I’m not sure about, but I’m going to have to like, because $1000. I considered some 1960s style ones but felt a little too much like photos of my dad from the 1960s.
I could, obviously, have taken my prescription to some online place and tried to get something cheaper – but given the crappitude of my eyes it’s probably not worth the torment.
Apparently I can expect at least a couple of weeks of discomfort when I get them, too, as my brain attempts to remap the visual cortex to handle this new system for seeing. Which sounds super fun. And of course, having had atropine drops in my eyes I got to spend the day as a vampire with pain from sunlight and eventually a moderately cracking headache from not being able to focus on anything.
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Despite that Kathryn and I got out in the garden as the evening wore on and planted four trees – A ranier cherry, a bing cherry, a mountain maple, and a buckthorn – all thanks to Sarah for the ace tip about the native plant sale and the tree sale. We said Hi to our neighbours and had a nice chat with our arborist who’s made the area around the trees at the back much prettier and healthier (bramble reduction, adding mulch). He also helped us plant the two cherries – digging holes for us as we trundled out to grab them in the pickup.
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In house news, we’re still getting quotes in, and waiting on news of a final quote from our contractor (he gave us a ballpark which we were happy with). We’re working with the city to come up with a plan for the frontage that we – and they – are happy with. While it’s stressful and tough, I think we might be making progress.