I Can See Clearly Now - And Is THAT What I Look Like?

I know this is one of those things that women aren't supposed to like revealing, but I just celebrated my 55th birthday. I've mentioned things in prior blog posts about "the joys of growing old", and, because I also just had to renew my driver's license - and because, after a certain age, Maine tests your eyesight EVERY time they renew - I had to do something I've come to dread over the 35 years since I left my hometown....

I had to go to the eye doctor....

*gasp*

Okay, so maybe for most of you, that's not such a *gasp* as it is for me, but let me just lay it all on the line as bluntly as I can....

I was born with a bum right eye, some kind of family gene type thing, as all my siblings have the same problem to a varying degree. The vision in that eye always was somewhere between 20/50 and 20/75 in my case. From the age of 5 or 6 (I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I remember holding an adult hand walking the streets of Bangor feeling like I was in a fun house with the first pair of glasses I had to wear all the time) to the age of 16, when I had a really intense eye doctor visit to determine if he was going to make me wear my glasses to drive or if I was going to be allowed to just wear them to read, as he had decided I could do when I was 14.

The decision was that, although he was concerned about my depth perception, he granted me the right to drive without my glasses, as the left eye overcompensates for the right one, so although my vision with both eyes is 20/40, it met the criteria for me to be allowed to drive without glasses.

The same has been true since that time, but when I left home after college to move in with my college boyfriend (who has been my husband for almost 33 years now), I left behind that doctor who had been seeing me on a regular basis (sometimes too regular, as I was a little hard on my glasses), and since then, it's been a crap shoot when it comes to finding someone who will listen to what I have to say about my eyes.

Most run me through their test procedures, listen to what I tell them - and then, in 99% of the cases, they've told me that I have astigmatism ("Astigmatism is an imperfection in the curvature of your cornea — the clear, round dome covering the eye's iris and pupil — or in the shape of the eye's lens." per the American Academy of Ophthamology), which means that, in order to try to make that eye see at 20/20, they put a certain type lens in that side of the glasses.....

And, when I put on the glasses and try to use them to read, the screwed up "dancing letters" that my right eye shows me when I try to read with that eye alone take over the landscape. Instead of a fixed bit of information on a page, I'm watching The Rockettes doing a dance routine.....

The migraines follow soon after, as my overworked brain tries to make the dancing stop so that I can read something - anything - on the page.

So, forced to either go to the eye doctor and have my eyes checked or give up my right to drive, I went to a new eye doctor who was listed as the only one in the area who took my husband's insurance and who was willing to take on a new patient. It seemed like the same old same old when going through the exam with the exception of a couple of new tests. (One, involving a very bright light, resulted in my turning at one point at work after the exam and seeing my manager wearing a halo. Knowing that he's not THAT angelic, I took it for what it was: a clear warning that a migraine was trying to take root. I left work early that evening.) When bifocals came into the discussion, as she doesn't call what's up with the right eye "astigmatism", but notes that I have both that issue and am starting to show signs of becoming far sighted (an older person thing, when suddenly your arms can't hold the page out far enough for you to see it clearly), I firmly tell her "No".

"Even the pair of progressives that a prior doctor amended to not have the astigmatism correction caused massive migraines." I tell her. Then I tell her about the last pair of glasses a doctor gave me, insisting that I needed "trifocals" because I worked on a computer. (They were almost pure glass at the top, "distance viewers" in the middle for driving, and readers at the bottom, so I would always have to look down to read.) "They caused more migraines than anything else I've ever tried."

"Okay, this is what I suggest we do." she tells me.

I need a very strong reading prescription, and since I do most of my reading on the job, she wants me to have one pair of straight up "readers" that I can put on and take off when needed. Since she would like me to have the "distance viewers" for the times when I'm having a rough day focusing (I also have allergies, so sinus congestion plays a big role in how well I see on certain days), she would like me to get a second pair, even if they just stay in the car....

So, when I picked out frames, I got a purple metal frame for the "distance viewers" and a gold metal frame for the "readers". (The person in their eye wear area asked me about plastic frames, as I avoided them rather bluntly. I related the fact that, from past experience, metal bends and can be re-formed long enough to get a new pair of glasses made. Plastic simply breaks, so there's that old "tape in the hair" trick for the duration of waiting for the new pair if the pair is even vaguely repairable.) When both pairs I chose had the "expandable bow" feature (so that, if something bonks you on the head, the bow has some "give" before the glasses fall off your face), I saw in her eyes that she realized the truth: I'm a klutz and have gone through a TON of frames!

Then came the "special features": just the basic on the pair that is likely to only be used in the car, but scratch and impact resistance added to the readers. (A good idea, it seems, as I dropped my brand-new readers four times at work - more than once on the cement floor in my back room - and they didn't collect a single tiny scratch.)

I picked them up yesterday morning, and when I put on the readers and held up a "test sheet" to see if they worked well, I was floored. "Oh my God!" came out before I could control the words. "I can clearly read even the 6 point font." (I was holding the page at a very comfortable reading distance, with my elbows just barely bent. I haven't been able to clearly read that small a font without straining for a couple of decades.)

With the distance lenses, I could look out the window and clearly read the signs in the parking lot, but they were almost the strength of my former readers. I could clearly read the 12 point font, but not the 10, as the smaller letters looked like they were doing the watusi. Once both pairs were adjusted so that they fit properly, I wished them a good day - and put on the distance viewers for a "test drive" before I left the parking lot.

A half an hour later, when I got back home, I went onto the eye doctor's web site and gave them a rave review. Not only had I worn the distance lenses for the drive without the tiniest inkling of a migraine trying to pay a visit, but I had stopped at a store and picked up a couple of things, changing my glasses to read a small price tag. No letters on any of the street signs or in the store appeared to be trying to take dance lessons. There were no halos, no slight twinges in the area around my right eye, no shooting lights (another of those "warning signs" of a migraine).

With the exceptions of deciding that I need one of those little "ropes" that the librarians always seemed to use to keep their readers right there around their necks (and preventing Yours Truly from seeing if "impact proof" means my glasses can be dropped from the top of a six foot ladder) and that I can't keep the readers on my face to walk, since all is out of focus within an arm's length of my face, the new readers also didn't cause any migraine warnings in the eight hour shift I worked. They blew my co-worker's minds, however, as they've become used to seeing me with glasses on from just after I sign in until just before I sign out for the day. Seeing me buzz around with the bow of my glasses tucked into the open collar of the uniform shirt kept causing double takes.

So, for those of you who live in Maine and would like to visit this miracle worker who has me wearing the first pair of prescription lenses I've been able to successfully tolerate since 1981, the company is Brighton Eye Care in Falmouth, Maine. The doctor I saw was Dr. Kimberley Goss. 

And what made all the difference, in my humble opinion, between this office and every other one I've walked into in the past?

It's something very simple and an art that I find is dying in our modern world: Everyone, from the receptionist who had to struggle to get me an appointment on a very restrictive work schedule to the beautiful young lady who adjusted the two sets of glasses so that they look "marvelous" yesterday, LISTENED TO ME. Dr. Goss is the first one in forever to tell me that, although there is a definite birth defect that makes my right eye weaker, she doesn't think it should be called "astigmatism", as that's a "very broad term that can cover all kinds of other defects to the eye". She's the first one since the man who saw me for my young life who understands that, no matter how much she would like to give me 20/20 vision in both eyes, that's very detrimental to my health and well being - and, when I'm trying to drive and the car coming toward me is doing the samba because I'm trying to wear lenses that allow the birth defect to rule the world, it can be very harmful to other people as well.

I don't know about any of my Constant Readers, but even with a pending "jail term" looming in which I will be home trying to assist my husband with recovery from a surgery, I'm starting to feel like 2016 is going to be my year....

I have a loyal "fan" base for my work who are becoming more and more vocal about getting people to buy my books, which showed in the increase in sales over 2015.

I'm starting to get Northern Bard Publications products into local bookstores (which will hopefully spread to other states in the near future).

I have glasses I can actually wear that are going to make my life better and make my "side job" easier to do as it will reduce the eye strain I've been suffering.

And, each time I check my "traffic report" for this blog, I'm honored to see more and more countries represented...

Once again, thank you to all who come and read these little episodes that I think of as sort of a mental cleansing, similar to a colon cleansing as it gets a lot of the random pap that would normally be floating around in the cobwebby recesses of my brain pan, gumming up the works. I know most of what I speak of may not be universal problems, but by being able to clear my head, I allow space for the characters who need me to tell their stories to step up and be counted....

Now, back to our regularly scheduled "program", which today involves trying to figure out how to fit the 9 feet of product onto the 8 feet of shelving space that someone in our corporate office set up for me to try to set last night. "Perhaps," whispers a small voice in the newly cleared out space that the above was taking up, "there is a way to put those products on a slight diagonal, so that they're visible, but not quite square to the edge of the shelf....."

*picturing this set up as I publish this post*