the eyeballs, they are alright
14 Nov 2009 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouTo really get why this past week had its moment of OH GOD I GET IT NAOW, I need to backtrack and first explain about my mother and the medical records clerks in Montgomery Alabama. Every transfer meant going on-base in August for the usual school physical-check-up thing that you have to do when entering a new school system. And that meant going to the medical building and the medical records office, where Mom would fill out a request slip so the clerks could retrieve our records. Something like that.
Those records (from what I recall) are stored in two general collections: one for active duty military, the other for retired military. So when the clerk accepts your records request slip, the first question the clerk asks is, "active duty or retired?" Except when we were in Montgomery, the clerk didn't ask that. I was nine at the time, so my mom had just turned 30... and I recall distinctly (thanks to my mother's tone of voice and the look on her face) when the clerk accepted the paper and simply asked, "retired?"
My mother's smile was cold enough and sharp enough to cut diamonds when she replied, "active duty."
A week later, she had my dad helping her with the frosting cap and the crochet hook to reverse-frost her hair (add dark streaks) to her salt-and-pepper silver-and-brunette hair. The irish in our family is where we get the early gray, but Mom wasn't going to deal with even one more instance of military clerks just assuming she was old enough to be retired. (Keep in mind also that my dad was an officer, in which case "retired" meant "had already done twenty years of service", and with most folks figuring that women are younger than their husbands, that would mean they were basically figuring Mom was at least forty, possibly mid-forties, and she was having none of that.)
Okay, now we fast-forward twenty-odd years, to last week when I had an Optomotrist appt to get new prescription and do the overall eye-health exam stuff. CP had used the doctor at Costco and had a good impression of her, so I figured that worked for me. (I should note I was wearing contacts at this point, though I had my old glasses with me.) I had a bit of time to kill before the appointment, so I wandered into Costco to see what prices for glasses and contacts are like now. I'm standing at the counter, looking around, and the clerk comes over to see if I need help.
Me: Hey. I'm in the market for new glasses and contacts.
Clerk: Do you have a prescription?
Me: It's out-dated. I've got an appointment in a half-hour, though.
Clerk: *smiles* How out-dated?
Me: Too much? I think my last eye exam was like, uhm, three years ago.
Clerk: Oh, that's not good at all! *gentle admonishment* Once you start wearing bifocals, you should get your eyes checked annually. Otherwise you could make your eyes worse.
Insert a very long pause here. I just stared for a least a good several seconds, before managing a reply.
Me: What makes you think I wear bifocals?
Clerk: ...
Me: ...
Clerk: I really put my foot in it with that one, didn't I.
Me: Yes, yes you did.
And then the clerk blinks a few times and says, "could we start over? here, hold on--" and then takes this deeeep breath, does this little shake, and then gives me a megawatt smile and says, "hi! are you interested in new glasses or contacts?" I didn't entirely laugh (and I didn't entirely forget the original assumption) but I did give the clerk a bit of credit for having the gumption to admit her screw-up and try to move on without making it worse.
Still. It was pretty much the equivalent of active-duty-or-retired, if you ask me. And all these years later, I had to call Mom and say, OH GOD NOW I GET IT.
Mom: So had you let your roots grow out, or what?*
Me: NO. THERE IS NO GRAY SHOWING.
Mom: Oh, that's much worse. You must have old eyes.
Me: NOT HELPING, MOM.
*Mom got the gray starting in college. I got it starting at 13. It's actually only in the past ten years or so that Mom's gotten as much gray I had by my late 20's. This is mostly because Mom's family doesn't have as much Irish as Dad's side of the family, and unfortunately I took after my paternal grandmother not just in shape and height but also in the goddamn gray.
It's only a partial consolation that when I finally did go to my doctor's appt, it turns out my eyes have gotten better. No, really! I had no idea that could happen. For the past five years or so, my eyes have been -4.50 and -3.75, and are now -2.50 and -3.00, respectively. Will wonders never cease. Curiously, the respective astigmatism levels were -1 and -1.75, and are now -1.5 and -.75, so the eye that most improved also got worse astigmatically, and the eye with less improvement is close to neglible astigmatism now, or negligble relatively, at least. I guess you win some, lose some. Regardless, I spent a good five minutes in absolute shock that my eyes could get better. I had no idea! I'd never met anyone who'd ever even implied such could happen!
Doctor: Well, as you get older, your eyes are more likely to get better.
Me: NO WAY.
Doctor: Yes, it's true.
Me: NO WAY. If only I'd known, I would've wanted to be OLDER A LOT SOONER!
Doctor: Also, if your prescription drops in strength, it's a sign that you probably won't need reading glasses until considerably later in life.
Me: Like I'd know. I can't bloody well see more than a foot away without blurring, even WITH the better prescription. HOW THE HELL WOULD I KNOW I NEED READING GLASSES?
On the downside, even if there are now extended-wear 30-day permeable-everything thinner-than-saran-wrap lenses (including toric versions), there are still no extended-wear toric colored contacts. I really hate that. I mean, toric eyeballs are the ones who could use the coloring the most people. Cripes. The advertising always says something like, "The tint is simply designed to facilitate locating the contact lenses." OH YAH RIGHT. If I could actually see well enough to spot that blue-tinted piece of freaking plastic where it's lying on the edge of my WHITE bathroom sink, then I could see well enough I wouldn't NEED the damn contacts in the first place. Again, credit to my mother who wrangled getting some of the earliest colored torics, in her own eye color (green), not for the cosmetic but because then she could SEE the stupid things if she dropped one. I learned her lesson, and did the same myself when it was my turn. (Even if it did mean proving to any friends witnessing the eye-contact business that my eyes are already green and the colored-lense had almost no impact on that, but that HEY LOOK THAR I could see the bright green spot on the bathroom sink or countertop from more than six inches away, whooo, and may I add, hoo, except for the whole no-I'm-not-vain-I'm-practical conversation which did get annoying but ANYWAY.)
However, those were one-year toric lenses, which at the time were like $350 or more for colored. Now you can get extended-wear torics for about $50 a box, but if you wanted colored, too? Try $100 a single lens. Still not cheap at all, and (fingers crossed here that I'm not tempting fate) I'm not quite as likely to lose lenses now as I was when I was younger, more impatient, and more likely to be getting ready for bed in a place unfamiliar to me... well, let's skip that bit, since I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.
Upshot is that I've spent the past four days wearing new contacts, and trying to get used to the fact that the strength is much lower (half in one eye!) than before. For the past two or three months, the headaches have been getting worse -- especially when at the computer and thus doing detail kind of things -- and apparently that's because I was wearing contacts or glasses that were over-correcting, but now... I've been dealing with headaches because my eyes aren't used to proper correction and have to work their way down from being over-corrected. AUUUGGGHHH.
If you're not familiar with how toric lenses work and are curious, when you have an astigmatism, this means the back of your eye is kinda bumpy, so things are not uniformly blurry in terms of distance. That is, if you're near-sighted but have no astigmatism, then things will be sharp until you reach the edge of your near-sightedness, and after that it'll start to get blurry. Everyone has this, actually, including folks with 20/20 vision, which just means that from 20 feet away, you can see objects of X size. Beyond 20 feet, objects of that size will be blurry, generally, because you're past the scope of visual acuity.
Astigmatism, and the back-of-the-eye being uneven, puts a kind of blur on everything, in a very unscientific way of explaining it. Having 20/20 vision but astigmatism means that what's only 5 inches away is identically blurry to the object that appears roughly the same size even though it's twenty feet away. That's why astigmatism is more likely to be self-diagnosed as "bad eyes", because people do notice when everything is blurry. It's the near-sighted and far-sighted issues that sneak up on us, because we learn to adjust by, well, just not looking that far away, or by holding what's close at arm's length so it'll be in focus.
As you can guess, this does mean that buying glasses and contacts is more complex. Like for lenses, which normally have three measurements: base curve, diameter, and power. Toric lenses have two more measurements: cylinder and axis. Even then, each company makes a slightly different shape to its lenses, and the exact same combination of five measurements might feel great if you wear Company A's lens, and yet just never seem to 'fit right' with Company B. This is why the optomotrist double- and triple-checked on my lenses to make sure they're CooperVision (one hash mark at the bottom, not two!); the extra detail is that after wearing lenses for awhile, the eye's shape will mold itself to the lens (especially when we're talking slightly-thicker lenses like torics), and switching brands at that point will have a stronger impact. Of course, just don't wear lenses for a month or so and the eye goes back to its original shape, so it's not like this stuff's permanent.
Continuing with the education-for-the-masses, if you purchase toric lenses, the proper procedure is to have you try on a pair right then and there -- and then you basically go through a only-slightly-abbreviated eye exam all over again, this time to make sure the torics fit properly and are fixing everything properly. It's not nearly as quick and easy a procedure as it would be if you don't have astigmatism, but then, astigmatism makes everything ten times more complicated. Okay, that said, it was still really freaking awesome that not only could the doctor see the back of my eyes in the final exam (nothing new there) but could take a picture so I could see it (definitely new) and then PRINT COPIES OUT FOR ME (way new, OMG that's what the back of my eyeball looks like, WAH). I am such a freaking geek, I know, I know.
Here ends the lecture (at least temporarily, you know I drop into that mode automatically), and now I get to wait a week or two, to see how my eyes adjust to being properly corrected. Wednesday I went to bed with a pounding headache, and Thursday wasn't much better, though Friday was incrementally better. If in a week I'm still going ugh by bedtime, then I have to go back and we do it all over again with a slight over-correction, and see if that takes care of it. It's entirely possible that having over-corrected vision for so long means that I just end up having to retain over-corrected vision, which is really kinda bizarre when I think about it, but I'm hoping that's not the case. (It's not like it's more or less expensive, since once we get into astigmatic lenses, it's all more expensive anyway, but whatever.) So for the time being, I'm also holding off on getting new glasses, because that prescription may change as well, depending on how my eyes adjust/react.
Moving right along, I celebrated the unprecedented prescription-strength drop, not by writing my thank-you notes for patronage-kindnesses (let's wait until the headaches are past, please?) but by cleaning up my drill press and getting it working, and then I rewired the table saw. Had to get a new belt for the saw, unfortunately, and next I need to clean the 12" rip-blade of long-term resin and spend an hour checking the carbide bits on the blade's tips (all freaking 100-something of them) to make sure the blade's still good, but then I'll have working table saw! And be able to FINALLY make angled cuts and do tenons and all kinda fancy wonderful things! Plus, I did a minor archaeological dig in the garage last night, and dug up several drill press attachments, which I'll take back to Woodcraft so the awesome guys there can help me figure out a) how the attachments go on the drill press and b) what that tells me about what kind of drill bit to get so I can do square holes for tenons. WAH. The technology! Okay, so it's technology that's, uhm, like, older than my dad but it's technology that now I know for certain WORKS and it's technology that doesn't actually cost me anything. (This is important, given that a seriously-worthwhile 12" table saw blade runs about $100 or more, holy crap.)
On that note, there's a chapter of Koji Ma Oshi upcoming, thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sharibet. (And a short story of whatever hinotori wants, and another for clarentine.) If I make it through a day without a headache, I'll consider that a good sign & will start writing, since that's at least a half-day at the computer and a bit more for polishing before posting. Fingers crossed my eyes'll be completely adjusted to new scrip in the next few days. There! Something to look forward to.
erm, assuming I don't get so happy with now-working power toolsthat I cut anything off. GUH. I don't even want to think about it. that I get distracted by the shiny and spend the next week doing cabinetry. *cough*
Those records (from what I recall) are stored in two general collections: one for active duty military, the other for retired military. So when the clerk accepts your records request slip, the first question the clerk asks is, "active duty or retired?" Except when we were in Montgomery, the clerk didn't ask that. I was nine at the time, so my mom had just turned 30... and I recall distinctly (thanks to my mother's tone of voice and the look on her face) when the clerk accepted the paper and simply asked, "retired?"
My mother's smile was cold enough and sharp enough to cut diamonds when she replied, "active duty."
A week later, she had my dad helping her with the frosting cap and the crochet hook to reverse-frost her hair (add dark streaks) to her salt-and-pepper silver-and-brunette hair. The irish in our family is where we get the early gray, but Mom wasn't going to deal with even one more instance of military clerks just assuming she was old enough to be retired. (Keep in mind also that my dad was an officer, in which case "retired" meant "had already done twenty years of service", and with most folks figuring that women are younger than their husbands, that would mean they were basically figuring Mom was at least forty, possibly mid-forties, and she was having none of that.)
Okay, now we fast-forward twenty-odd years, to last week when I had an Optomotrist appt to get new prescription and do the overall eye-health exam stuff. CP had used the doctor at Costco and had a good impression of her, so I figured that worked for me. (I should note I was wearing contacts at this point, though I had my old glasses with me.) I had a bit of time to kill before the appointment, so I wandered into Costco to see what prices for glasses and contacts are like now. I'm standing at the counter, looking around, and the clerk comes over to see if I need help.
Me: Hey. I'm in the market for new glasses and contacts.
Clerk: Do you have a prescription?
Me: It's out-dated. I've got an appointment in a half-hour, though.
Clerk: *smiles* How out-dated?
Me: Too much? I think my last eye exam was like, uhm, three years ago.
Clerk: Oh, that's not good at all! *gentle admonishment* Once you start wearing bifocals, you should get your eyes checked annually. Otherwise you could make your eyes worse.
Insert a very long pause here. I just stared for a least a good several seconds, before managing a reply.
Me: What makes you think I wear bifocals?
Clerk: ...
Me: ...
Clerk: I really put my foot in it with that one, didn't I.
Me: Yes, yes you did.
And then the clerk blinks a few times and says, "could we start over? here, hold on--" and then takes this deeeep breath, does this little shake, and then gives me a megawatt smile and says, "hi! are you interested in new glasses or contacts?" I didn't entirely laugh (and I didn't entirely forget the original assumption) but I did give the clerk a bit of credit for having the gumption to admit her screw-up and try to move on without making it worse.
Still. It was pretty much the equivalent of active-duty-or-retired, if you ask me. And all these years later, I had to call Mom and say, OH GOD NOW I GET IT.
Mom: So had you let your roots grow out, or what?*
Me: NO. THERE IS NO GRAY SHOWING.
Mom: Oh, that's much worse. You must have old eyes.
Me: NOT HELPING, MOM.
*Mom got the gray starting in college. I got it starting at 13. It's actually only in the past ten years or so that Mom's gotten as much gray I had by my late 20's. This is mostly because Mom's family doesn't have as much Irish as Dad's side of the family, and unfortunately I took after my paternal grandmother not just in shape and height but also in the goddamn gray.
It's only a partial consolation that when I finally did go to my doctor's appt, it turns out my eyes have gotten better. No, really! I had no idea that could happen. For the past five years or so, my eyes have been -4.50 and -3.75, and are now -2.50 and -3.00, respectively. Will wonders never cease. Curiously, the respective astigmatism levels were -1 and -1.75, and are now -1.5 and -.75, so the eye that most improved also got worse astigmatically, and the eye with less improvement is close to neglible astigmatism now, or negligble relatively, at least. I guess you win some, lose some. Regardless, I spent a good five minutes in absolute shock that my eyes could get better. I had no idea! I'd never met anyone who'd ever even implied such could happen!
Doctor: Well, as you get older, your eyes are more likely to get better.
Me: NO WAY.
Doctor: Yes, it's true.
Me: NO WAY. If only I'd known, I would've wanted to be OLDER A LOT SOONER!
Doctor: Also, if your prescription drops in strength, it's a sign that you probably won't need reading glasses until considerably later in life.
Me: Like I'd know. I can't bloody well see more than a foot away without blurring, even WITH the better prescription. HOW THE HELL WOULD I KNOW I NEED READING GLASSES?
On the downside, even if there are now extended-wear 30-day permeable-everything thinner-than-saran-wrap lenses (including toric versions), there are still no extended-wear toric colored contacts. I really hate that. I mean, toric eyeballs are the ones who could use the coloring the most people. Cripes. The advertising always says something like, "The tint is simply designed to facilitate locating the contact lenses." OH YAH RIGHT. If I could actually see well enough to spot that blue-tinted piece of freaking plastic where it's lying on the edge of my WHITE bathroom sink, then I could see well enough I wouldn't NEED the damn contacts in the first place. Again, credit to my mother who wrangled getting some of the earliest colored torics, in her own eye color (green), not for the cosmetic but because then she could SEE the stupid things if she dropped one. I learned her lesson, and did the same myself when it was my turn. (Even if it did mean proving to any friends witnessing the eye-contact business that my eyes are already green and the colored-lense had almost no impact on that, but that HEY LOOK THAR I could see the bright green spot on the bathroom sink or countertop from more than six inches away, whooo, and may I add, hoo, except for the whole no-I'm-not-vain-I'm-practical conversation which did get annoying but ANYWAY.)
However, those were one-year toric lenses, which at the time were like $350 or more for colored. Now you can get extended-wear torics for about $50 a box, but if you wanted colored, too? Try $100 a single lens. Still not cheap at all, and (fingers crossed here that I'm not tempting fate) I'm not quite as likely to lose lenses now as I was when I was younger, more impatient, and more likely to be getting ready for bed in a place unfamiliar to me... well, let's skip that bit, since I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.
Upshot is that I've spent the past four days wearing new contacts, and trying to get used to the fact that the strength is much lower (half in one eye!) than before. For the past two or three months, the headaches have been getting worse -- especially when at the computer and thus doing detail kind of things -- and apparently that's because I was wearing contacts or glasses that were over-correcting, but now... I've been dealing with headaches because my eyes aren't used to proper correction and have to work their way down from being over-corrected. AUUUGGGHHH.
If you're not familiar with how toric lenses work and are curious, when you have an astigmatism, this means the back of your eye is kinda bumpy, so things are not uniformly blurry in terms of distance. That is, if you're near-sighted but have no astigmatism, then things will be sharp until you reach the edge of your near-sightedness, and after that it'll start to get blurry. Everyone has this, actually, including folks with 20/20 vision, which just means that from 20 feet away, you can see objects of X size. Beyond 20 feet, objects of that size will be blurry, generally, because you're past the scope of visual acuity.
Astigmatism, and the back-of-the-eye being uneven, puts a kind of blur on everything, in a very unscientific way of explaining it. Having 20/20 vision but astigmatism means that what's only 5 inches away is identically blurry to the object that appears roughly the same size even though it's twenty feet away. That's why astigmatism is more likely to be self-diagnosed as "bad eyes", because people do notice when everything is blurry. It's the near-sighted and far-sighted issues that sneak up on us, because we learn to adjust by, well, just not looking that far away, or by holding what's close at arm's length so it'll be in focus.
As you can guess, this does mean that buying glasses and contacts is more complex. Like for lenses, which normally have three measurements: base curve, diameter, and power. Toric lenses have two more measurements: cylinder and axis. Even then, each company makes a slightly different shape to its lenses, and the exact same combination of five measurements might feel great if you wear Company A's lens, and yet just never seem to 'fit right' with Company B. This is why the optomotrist double- and triple-checked on my lenses to make sure they're CooperVision (one hash mark at the bottom, not two!); the extra detail is that after wearing lenses for awhile, the eye's shape will mold itself to the lens (especially when we're talking slightly-thicker lenses like torics), and switching brands at that point will have a stronger impact. Of course, just don't wear lenses for a month or so and the eye goes back to its original shape, so it's not like this stuff's permanent.
Continuing with the education-for-the-masses, if you purchase toric lenses, the proper procedure is to have you try on a pair right then and there -- and then you basically go through a only-slightly-abbreviated eye exam all over again, this time to make sure the torics fit properly and are fixing everything properly. It's not nearly as quick and easy a procedure as it would be if you don't have astigmatism, but then, astigmatism makes everything ten times more complicated. Okay, that said, it was still really freaking awesome that not only could the doctor see the back of my eyes in the final exam (nothing new there) but could take a picture so I could see it (definitely new) and then PRINT COPIES OUT FOR ME (way new, OMG that's what the back of my eyeball looks like, WAH). I am such a freaking geek, I know, I know.
Here ends the lecture (at least temporarily, you know I drop into that mode automatically), and now I get to wait a week or two, to see how my eyes adjust to being properly corrected. Wednesday I went to bed with a pounding headache, and Thursday wasn't much better, though Friday was incrementally better. If in a week I'm still going ugh by bedtime, then I have to go back and we do it all over again with a slight over-correction, and see if that takes care of it. It's entirely possible that having over-corrected vision for so long means that I just end up having to retain over-corrected vision, which is really kinda bizarre when I think about it, but I'm hoping that's not the case. (It's not like it's more or less expensive, since once we get into astigmatic lenses, it's all more expensive anyway, but whatever.) So for the time being, I'm also holding off on getting new glasses, because that prescription may change as well, depending on how my eyes adjust/react.
Moving right along, I celebrated the unprecedented prescription-strength drop, not by writing my thank-you notes for patronage-kindnesses (let's wait until the headaches are past, please?) but by cleaning up my drill press and getting it working, and then I rewired the table saw. Had to get a new belt for the saw, unfortunately, and next I need to clean the 12" rip-blade of long-term resin and spend an hour checking the carbide bits on the blade's tips (all freaking 100-something of them) to make sure the blade's still good, but then I'll have working table saw! And be able to FINALLY make angled cuts and do tenons and all kinda fancy wonderful things! Plus, I did a minor archaeological dig in the garage last night, and dug up several drill press attachments, which I'll take back to Woodcraft so the awesome guys there can help me figure out a) how the attachments go on the drill press and b) what that tells me about what kind of drill bit to get so I can do square holes for tenons. WAH. The technology! Okay, so it's technology that's, uhm, like, older than my dad but it's technology that now I know for certain WORKS and it's technology that doesn't actually cost me anything. (This is important, given that a seriously-worthwhile 12" table saw blade runs about $100 or more, holy crap.)
On that note, there's a chapter of Koji Ma Oshi upcoming, thanks to
sharibet. (And a short story of whatever hinotori wants, and another for clarentine.) If I make it through a day without a headache, I'll consider that a good sign & will start writing, since that's at least a half-day at the computer and a bit more for polishing before posting. Fingers crossed my eyes'll be completely adjusted to new scrip in the next few days. There! Something to look forward to.erm, assuming I don't get so happy with now-working power tools
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 05:31 pm (UTC)I have also found that the "two week" disposables last a month easy as long as you're taking them out at night. Bastards are totally trying to stiff us for more money.
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 08:28 pm (UTC)Longer, possibly. I was upfront with the doctor that she was looking at quasi-disposable one-month (not extended wear, but disposables) that I'd been wearing for more than six months. Longer, possibly. And that I'd done that with each. Then, when she handed over what I'm wearing now, she said they're one-month extended wear, so I could probably wear them for four to five months before needing to replace them. The trick isn't just to take them out every night (which I do, anyway, because torics are damned uncomfortable to sleep in), but also to make sure you give them a bit of a rub before putting them in the solution. I do that already, years of habit, from the days when you had to use the separate cleanser before soaking.
Generally, though, that's the secret to making one-months last up to six months, or longer: rub 'em a few seconds before soaking. Ta-dah. (CP was right; this optometrist rocks.)
no subject
Date: 15 Nov 2009 08:35 pm (UTC)However -- when I first grew a beard, about 26 years old, it came in with gray streaks.
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 07:20 pm (UTC)YAY! Thank you! I am looking forward to the treat.
Also, a much bigger cheer for the new glasses and (hopefully) the end of the headaches.
I got my first set of glasses three years ago, when I turned 39, because I work as a technical writer and was developing the pounding headaches after a day spent writing system administrators' guides, and then going home to write more speculative fiction in the evenings. The prospect of no longer being able to write for a living terrified the snot out of me.
So I at least somewhat understand the blessed relief from being able to work at keyboard and monitor without having to pay a price in pain for it.
Re: the table saw: sounds very cool, but then again, power tools usually are. Do you have a particular project in mind?
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 08:29 pm (UTC)*looks back at 20+ years of glasses* I HATE YOU. grrrrr. In my next life, I'm going to be tanned AND have perfect vision. Damn it.
Re: the table saw: sounds very cool, but then again, power tools usually are. Do you have a particular project in mind?
Heh. Oh, yeah, baby. It's called FINISH THE DAMN KITCHEN. If you hear hollering about a month from now, it's CP celebrating.
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 10:12 pm (UTC)I could rub it in and mention that I haven't started to go gray yet *evil grin* but then I stop and remember that no matter the state of my eyes and hair, you're still a much better writer than I am. (And I mean that sincerely.)
Also not tanned. Pale and kind of freckled and starting to sag around the jowls. The kindest thing you can say about my looks is that I have an honest face.
no subject
Date: 15 Nov 2009 12:54 am (UTC)The kindest thing you can say about my looks is that I have an honest face.
That's okay. I'm just kept for the entertainment value.
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 08:30 pm (UTC)My dad's comment about the whole thing: "I don't actually need reading glasses. I just need longer arms."
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 08:34 pm (UTC)Man I am so damn hyper today, and I don't know why.
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Nov 2009 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 08:49 pm (UTC)Well, if you ever get the time, give Dr. William H. Bates's book a chance. ^^ It is called Better Eyesight Without Glasses. There are many new versions and variations of it since its publication in the 1920s, but I still think it is the greatest thing ever written on the topic. ^^v
no subject
Date: 15 Nov 2009 12:59 am (UTC)Thanks for the book suggestion -- I'll keep an eye out for it, err, so to speak. I still find it rather peculiar and somewhat marvelous that wearing contacts can actually reduce your astigmatism, simply by shaping the eye in such a way that it compensates for the uneven back-part of the eyeball. Enough that daily all-day wear for several years can pretty much clear out the astigmatism (or at least to such a degree that it's almost unnoticeable).
Which has been what I've always done: two years on, two years off. This most recent time, I would've expected the astigmatism to be almost nil, except that my last pair of contacts were bugging me so much that most of the time I wore glasses, so I lost that benefit. But next time I'll have it!
no subject
Date: 14 Nov 2009 10:17 pm (UTC)High five, anyway, for making the one-month disposables last forever by rubbing them. I find that the lenses feel much better in my eyes even with no-rub solution.
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Date: 15 Nov 2009 01:08 am (UTC)Off we go to eye doctor, I get glasses, then to the base exchange where the only eyeglasses for kids were the horrendous military-grade el cheapo big freaking glasses with plastic frames OMG THE UGLY... but I went right back to getting 100s on my spelling tests... and about that point, figured out the good part of being put at the back of the class was that the teacher couldn't tell if I had a book under my desk. Far as the teacher was concerned, I was keeping quiet, so she was happy, and she was leaving me alone (to read Shogun, bwahahaha) so I was happy. Life was about as good as it could get, if we ignore the military's horrible non-concept of fashion for kids. Sigh.
As for glasses making your eyes worse... well, not really. It's more that our eyes age at different rates, in a sense, and when we've got glasses, we're using them in a slightly different fashion, which can cause strain. Over the past however many years of needing eye-fixes (for the first five years, and then contacts starting in HS, and then a few years here and there where all I wore was glasses), I've noticed the vision gets worse independent, really, of whether it's glasses or contacts. It has a lot more to do with what you're doing -- reading, detail-oriented work (like, say, COLLEGE!) versus less detailed stuff like when I had the bookstore. When you're not spending hours with your nose in a book squinting at the fine print, your eyesight will degrade at a much lower speed. (Not to mention that wearing contacts has its own bundle of issues that are never a problem with glasses, like infections, corneal scratches, and so on.)
Plus, low light really doesn't help, but I've yet to see any proof that sitting too close to the TV makes your eyes bad. I mean, mom had like a twenty-foot rule on the television for that reason, and here I am. Fat lot of good that rule did me, hunh. And all those carrots, damn it!
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Date: 15 Nov 2009 03:11 am (UTC)I'm doomed. I ate carrots like no other as a kid, too--so much for that urban myth.
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Date: 15 Nov 2009 01:41 am (UTC)I was diagnosed with astigmatism and ended up with toric lenses for a bit. The biggest issue with contacts was really the base curve. My eyes must be oddly shaped in the front as well because I'd always need to ask for tighter lenses if the optometrist doesn't pick up on it. It sucks that you were getting headaches due to overcorrection but at least it's fixed now.
I can't believe your eyes got better with age. My biggest fear is that my eyes will keep getting worse and they're already pretty bad. -6.00/-5.25 x.x
Koji ma Oshi sounds familiar. Is it your original story?
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Date: 15 Nov 2009 01:44 am (UTC)Koji ma Oshi is one of the old GW fics I keep telling myself I should finish. All thanks go to Sharibet for kicking me in the duff on that one. Heh.
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Date: 15 Nov 2009 04:58 pm (UTC)That means I can't even henna my hair, because henna does best when it attaches to and cloaks the pigment, in some way. Instead, I end up with hair that's just as translucently light, but with a slight orange-ish tinge (instead of the same dramatic red that, say, my friends with silver hair get when they use the traditional henna). What's worse is that my hair, if left untouched, ends up looking like I'm using those old-lady rinses in the "champagne blonde" color -- but it's not. That's the effect of pollution coating the hair, even in just a single day. It also means the pigmentless-hair will discolor from shampoos and conditioners that contain otherwise harmless dyes (harmless for most people, color-wise, that is): the reds and yellows and blues that make the shampoo a pretty color in your hand. GYAH. Special shampoos (like what swimmers use) and special conditioners and that was just too much effort for hair, IMO!
On the other hand, going gray so young meant my mother let me dye my hair starting as a freshman in HS. She was convinced that having gray hair in HS would be horribly traumatizing, so off I went to the local pharmacy with cash in hand to pick out hair-dye. All the rest of my friends bemoaned that their mothers freaked out if they did anything to their hair... while mine freaked out if I didn't. If roots started to show, she'd send me back to the store to pick up more dye. (The running humor in there was that for years I could never remember what color or brand I'd used the previous time, so my hair really did change colors all through HS, from lightest to darkest shades of red. I didn't hit non-red shades -- like green and blue and purple, wahahaha -- until college, though.)
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Date: 15 Nov 2009 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Nov 2009 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Nov 2009 04:41 am (UTC)