Christopher Street

Bridging the Ophthalmology Gap

"I have in my hands," Dr. Gedamo exclaimed, clutching a sheaf of papers in his trembling fingers and pacing in circles about the carpet while I stood at the window, barely able to make out the Capitol dome through the thick, churning fog that rolled in off the Potomac, wondering to myself what matter could possibly be so urgent as to bring the distinguished Ophthalmologist bursting into exam room three at the unseemly hour, "definitive proof that your contacts are too strong!"

So I have had a headache for a month. At first, I assumed that it was just allergies, the pollen count being 17 Kajillion the last time I looked. I took some advil, the headache went away till the next day. But the next day, long about mid-morning, it would be back.

Weekends seemed better, but I thought that that was because I was inside more. More inside means less exposure to pollen and less allergy. Hence, fewer headaches.

Now, there is an important bit that I have skipped and rather than go back, I am just going to tuck it in here. I wear contacts. I have worn contacts, off and on, since I was 13. For the first 10 years or so, mostly on. For the last 13 years, mostly off. But still, off and on. These days, I have been inclined to only wear them on the weekends, when I am outside, when we are out on the boat, when we are at the odd amusement park--times when glasses are a pain in the toches. Most of the time, though--at work, at home, at the movies, watching TV, surfing the net, writing in my LJ--most of the time, I wore glasses. Till about six weeks ago.

Six weeks ago, I started a new job, a job that involved large amounts of outdoor canvassing. In addition to the monster blister on my foot, the thing that bugged me the most was the swapping of glasses for sunglasses for glasses again. Not to mention that my prescription lenses are not dark enough for the big, high, noon sun. No problem, thought I. I can wear my contacts.

Now, I got this last incarnation of contacts/glasses in October of 2000. The contacts are 2-week disposables. I had gone through about 6 pairs in the last 18 months. That's how much I had worn them, to reiterate not much at all.

So, to recap for those with attention spans shorter than mine--I'm getting these headaches. I think it's pollen. I don't get them on the weekend.

And then, last week, I wore my glasses on a weekday. It was overcast so the sunglass thing wasn't going to be an issue and, more importantly, there are just some days that I can't face putting the contacts in. So I wore my glasses on a Wednesday and it was the first weekday in weeks that I didn't have a headache. So, science girl that I am (and how my husband is laughing at that, I'm sure), I wore the glasses the next day. No headache. The next day. No headache.

Hmmm. I began to sense a pattern.

Maybe it's not pollen. Maybe it's eyestrain. Maybe I need new glasses.

But my head only hurts when I am not wearing my glasses. Maybe I need new contacts. But shouldn't those prescriptions be the same?

Hmph. I am so painfully naive in the ways of the world.

So I go to the eye doctor and tell him of my headaches and he agrees that it sounds like eyestrain. He checks my eyes and tells me that my prescription is the same as it was 18 months ago. Once I recover from the shock of that (my prescription has never been the same from one annual visit to the next, not in 31 years. Has my eyesight stabilized, at age 36? Or is this the just the tip of Myopia Mountain, before I begin the long slide into Bifocal Gorge? But I digress...), I begin to panic.

My eyes are fine. Specifically, my glasses are fine. If my prescription is fine, why the headaches? What is wrong? My head is racing, all the things that can be wrong with me running like the bulls through the Pamplona of my brain.

And then, Dr. Gedamo says the thing that I least expected. Turns out that my contacts are not the same prescription as my glasses.

Are you puzzled by that? Join the club.

See, at my level of blind-itude, apparently contacts aren't made in the same increments as they are for more normally sighted people. They are less granular. So, while my glasses can be made to precisely match my ocular defects, my contacts, well, not so much.

I need a -6.25 astigmatic lens. That doesn't exist. So, the good Dr. G made a judgment call. He had to choose between the -6.0 contacts, which would offer me good close-up vision but distance vision that was a little soft, and the -6.5 contacts which, apparently, would allow me to read my name on a grain of rice at 60 paces.

He chose B. So, I've been wearing these super high octane lenses for the last 18 months. And I didn't notice, because I never wore them for more than a day here and there.

We're going to try some other brands, some other tweaky prescription-y things and see if there is any compromise between underpowered and supercharged. That will likely take several tries and correspondingly, several weeks.

For now, I am wearing my glasses.

And they were all run over by a large centipede.

Posted by Lori at April 23, 2003 9:59 PM