I've been scouring the internet is search of essays and or practical advice on getting used to multifocal contact lenses. I have only had mine for a week, so maybe I'm still in the adjustment period, but right now I would say they are somewhat good, but mostly awful. Everything up to about fifteen or twenty feet away is much better than the mono-vision prescription I've been using for several years, but everything beyond that feels like I'm walking around with a very bad astigmatism. The stars are a blur. The moon looks like a three-moon Venn diagram. I can't read street signs until I'm close to them, and even then they are blurry. I can't recognize the people in the lobby outside my office.
I want to find an essay that would reassure me that those affects are only temporary, and even if it's not going to be the same crystal clarity as a good pair of glasses, I will, at the very least, only see one object in the distance. I also want to know how long to give it.
Much of my frustration begins with the optometrist. I have only been to one optometrist that actually discussed vision with me and discussed what I wanted to do. Dr. Samuel Berne is a behavioral optometrist. He wrote a book called Creating Your Personal Vision: A Mind-Body Guide for Better Eyesight, which I read years ago. I read it after reading a similar book, Take Off Your Glasses and See by Jacob Liberman. I firmly believe you can improve your eyesight, but I've never been able to get very far. Appointments with Dr. Berne were expensive, and I had two small children at home at the time, so the amount of time I could devote to eye exercises was small. Interruptions were frequent. Dr. Berne also had a lot of other components to his overall treatment plan, and it all just seemed a little too much for a busy person. (Although I would say that taking time to take care of myself is an ongoing issue.) He is currently offering a set of online classes, including a consultation, for $1900 or so. I'm tempted and no longer have small children, but I cannot promise myself that I would take the time to do the work.
All the other optometrists I've seen have seemed welded to their autorefractors. Visits are far too fast to actually discuss vision and vision options. For the visit leading up to the multifocal contacts, I decided to switch eye doctors because the last one I've been seeing always seemed so rushed. My mono-vision prescription has been irritating me, particularly when I'm trying to read the newspaper. I also bicycle to work, and by the time I arrive at work, the top part of my glasses has been smeared by my wild eyebrows. For reasons no optometrist has ever thought to explain, they prescribe a reading lens for the non-dominant eye, and I think my brain can read OK with that eye, but I also feel it struggling with the relative blank spot in front of the dominant eye. I have used progressive glasses in the past, but they drove me crazy as well - descending stairs, descending steep trails or down climbing cliffs - that area of blur when looking down was disorienting.
So I thought I would ask about multi-focals. And I wanted to have a glasses prescription with a weaker prescription for the right (dominant) eye. I found I could read better with older pairs of glasses that were not as strong. I also thought that a good discussion would included more discussion about weakening the prescription. How weak is too weak? What distance vision is acceptable? Would a weaker monovision prescription allow a better visual navigation of the world than a set of multifocal contacts? Should I give bifocals a try? Should I go for a pair of distance glasses and a pair of reading glasses? What, when you are a middle-aged nearsighted may with a little bit of presbyopia, should you really do? Granted, I'm ready for a long discussion. Maybe it's asking too much to expect an optometrist to take the time.
So, I thought I would switch optometrists and go to one highly rated on the internet. He was as rushed as my former one. I went in determined to make clear what I wanted, but it felt like he was trained not to allow the patient to interrupt. I told him I was interested in multi-focal contact lenses, and rather than discuss them with me, he simply prescribed them. I did get a weaker mono-vision prescription for glasses from him. That prescription works very well. I do have to say that I like having the close binocular vision the contacts provide.
But the foggy distance is driving me batty. I feel like it is largely due to the multi-focal quality of the lens. But is it? Is my brain just not adjusting properly? Or is there something else going on that I do not understand? When I did my follow-up appointment, they insisted it was just because the left contact was not strong enough, and they have prescribed a stronger lens that will get here next week, for me to try. I don't believe that's it. I can't see distance when I am only looking out of my right eye. How long should I give it? What's the level of compromise with multi-focals? I wish I could find a few essays like this one, albeit with a happy ending, on the internet. Is the fact most of the information on the internet is for eye doctors indicative that they just don't work that well? And if so, why aren't there multiple blog posts about how bad they are?
I'll give it a good try, and I'll give the represcribed ones a good try, and in the meantime, I'll try to find an optometrist who actually likes to talk about vision and what can be done with it.
