Wishing for Perfect Eyesight: Thick Glasses & Contacts Since Age 9

When people ask you, “If you had three wishes, what would they be?” my first reply for over three decades was “perfect eyesight!” Here’s my story of my wish finally coming true!

In my research before my eye surgeries, I found several people who had blogged their experiences in great detail, including their uncorrected experience and following after their surgeries as they healed, so I thought I should return the favor.

When my mom took me for my first eye checkup when I was 5 and mentioned I had started reading at age 3, our family friend the optometrist said “you’d better watch her eyesight since she shouldn’t be able to focus this closely at this young age.” Usually children are born slightly far-sighted, then normally get more near-sighted until they stabilize around age 5 or 6. He was right, since I started wearing glasses at 20/60 when I was 6 years old, and I had progressed so badly so quickly that I started wearing hard contact lenses when I was 9 and already 20/400. Those were a miracle for years, such a relief not to be pushing my glasses back up my nose all the time, then when I had some protein deposit problems in high school I moved to rigid gas permeable (RGP) lenses, and continued wearing those for over 30 years, all under the excellent care of Dr. Scott Nygard, even driving back to Sacramento from the Bay Area for appointments for years after I moved. I was very lucky that I tolerated hard contact lenses so well and was corrected completely, but there were always things I couldn’t do, and I hated feeling so utterly helpless without any glasses or contacts. Perfect eyesight remained on my wishlist, but never expecting I could ever get there, since by graduating college I was almost -12 diopters in both eyes, far past where the 20/20 scale makes any sense, and kept having minor but noticeable changes in prescription in at least one eye every year anyway.

I had 3 years from age 25 to 28 with no change, but then I started getting worse again every year. During those years, LASIK was being refined and improved all the time with more data, such as high amounts of correction being more risk of complications, especially with halos, folds in the cornea flap, and other scary things. Since I had no halos with my RGP contacts, I really didn’t want to make myself worse, and the higher risk of complications scared me, so LASIK wasn’t on my options list even if I ever finally stopped changing prescription.

Around age 35 I started having trouble in the mornings being able to see with my contacts. They would be sparkling clean when I put them in, but within 5 minutes my eyes had thrown so much protein on them, it was like looking through foggy smears. I started being more careful about taking them out earlier in the evening to give my eyes more rest, waiting longer in the morning after waking up to put them in, even cleaning them with enzyme solution every single day, but it would still happen even with brand-new, fresh from the factory lenses unless I waited a good 90 minutes after waking up before putting the lenses in my eyes. Not very convenient for working or traveling, especially when I’m not a morning person in the first place!

In April 2013, a few months before my “answer to life, the universe and everything” birthday, my mom had seen a daytime talk show with a young woman in the double-digit diopter range who had implantable contact lens (ICL) surgery and was overjoyed with her results. I had never heard of this surgery, so I looked it up, found it is more formally called phakic intraocular lens (IOL) surgery, that I was in the low to midrange of the possible correction amount, plus if you ended up with halos or something you didn’t like, YOU COULD TAKE THEM OUT AGAIN. Of course it required a second surgery to remove them, but that was major to me! LASIK being a permanent change had always scared me, so this was a huge deal for my comfort level of being willing to try. My annual eye exam was that same trip, and I was finally 6 years with no change in prescription and in my early 40s, so hopefully stable for good until reading glasses, and I was still testing a few years away from needing those. I was so excited there might be a chance for my wish to finally come true!

 
Next: My Intraocular Lens Implant Surgery & Healing Experience
 

Uncategorized IOL, LASIK, intraocular lens implants, implantable contact lenses, ICL, eyes, myopia, correction, surgery, nearsighted, near-sighted, eye surgery