Family Life

I’m in the process of getting new contacts. I’ve put up with the frustrations of poor eyesight for years, and finally decided to take the plunge and do something about it. In case you’re wondering why it’s taken me so long, I have a history of really good excuses.

Several years ago I went to get laser surgery to improve my vision. After some tests, they told me I had keratoconus and could not be treated. That was quite a blow. I’d done all the research, gathered up the nerve, and taken a day off work to go and get blasted by a laser (in my eyes!) and it had all been for nothing. So sorry. Bye bye.

So I researched keratoconus. Nobody really knows what causes it. It’s progressive (gets worse and worse) and irreversible (can’t be fixed). There are a several options for treatment, mostly trial-and-error, nothing perfect. Now I was really depressed. It looked like treatment was going to be lengthy and expensive, with no guarantee in the end.

I had normal contacts that did a good job correcting near-sightedness. Though things weren’t perfect they were good enough, or so I thought. Look at the picture below to get an idea of what “normal” looked like to me. It’s a screen capture of some of the text above, modified in Photoshop. There’s a little blurring of the text (regular contacts can’t sharpen the image completely), but the real killer is a double image, slightly fainter, above and to the left. This mostly affected reading. At certain type sizes and line spacings it was almost impossible to read, despite the fact that the text itself was relatively sharp.

Amazing what you can get used to, eh? Imagine calling this “normal”! But I lived with my excuses.

When I finally decided I’d had enough, I made a phone call to the local university’s optometry clinic. If anybody knew the latest and greatest treatment it would be them. My own optometrist didn’t have a clue. The phone call was encouraging and sobering at the same time. Yes, we’re happy to treat you. You’ll be coming in for regular consultations for a whole year, that’ll be $250. Yes, treatment is trial-and-error, and each trial will cost about $80 per eye. Boundless enthusiasm and optimism, high prices, no guarantees.

I’ve had three lengthy visits so far, each requiring about a half-day off work (now there’s another significant cost). I’m being fitted for special hard contact lenses. They’re designed in a top-secret lab in New Zealand, of all places, and made by a local licensed factory. I’ve worn contacts for many years, but going to hard contacts is painful. It’s like having a handful of sand in your eyes. All the time. And you’re not allowed to rub them. The first half hour after putting them in involves copious weeping.

When you go to get a prescription for glasses, the optometrist sits you behind a mask-like contraption, and then proceeds to insert various lenses into the machine and asks Which one is better? This one or that one? And by a process of elimination and fine-tuning you arrive at the right prescription.

With this kind of contacts that method is of limited usefulness. Instead, the optometrist has a binder full of vinyl pages with samples of contact lenses in every configuration under the sun. What curvature (flat or steep)? In 0.05 increments. What diameter? In 0.2mm increments. What angle of astigmatism? In 5

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