Are you a glasses wearer or contacts?(what pescription too) If neither, have you gotten lasik or other surgury or is your pescription so low that correction isnt needed? Which do you prefer and why?


I almost exclusively wear glasses. Ideally, I would want neither but its impossible being -5 diopters where anything more than 9" becomes blurry. The problems with glasses is the lense becomes dusty and smears and I clean them at least 10x a day. There is also a sensition of their presence on my nose and ears. Minification is there but not a serious issue, especially with my weaker -3.25 "computer" glasses.

Contacts solve the problems glasses produce but have their own issues. Most annoying is my vision is funky for 10-20 minutes after I put the contacts on. The contact solution I use to wet them gets on my eyes and contacts and this causes disortion of light which results in glare, starbursts and even doubling vision! After this clears up my eyes start feeling dry which gets worse over the hours. I am blinking hard to moisen my eyes with tears but the contacts absorb them like a wick and those evaporate. My eyes are never comfortable for long and having your eyes irritated is much worse than a barely noticable presence of glasses as I am so used to them often I dont even feel them!

Another issue, especially for presbyopes is things from near become blurry as in my case. I do have samples of weaker contacts but its a tradeoff. Monovision is disorientating and I lose much binocular vision. I have tried progressive contacts(-4), they work fine for distance and correct me as well as my -5 glasses but its not clear enough from near and I feel my eyes straining to accomodiate. Those contacts are also especially thick and uncomfortable. Infection and corneal erosion, especially with dry eyes is a concern. My own optometrist warns everyone to look out for infection and he told me he sees people come in all the time with infections and complications from contacts, especially if they sleep in them. That and he says because of my presbyopia, I would still need glasses(the reading type) over contacts.

I have looked into lasik but again presbyopia factors in. I could opt to undercorrect my eyes to -1.5 diopters down from -5 and only need a thin pair of glasses to drive and certain activities. I would lose some near vision but have enough not to need readers except for fine print. If I get fully corrected my distance vision will be fine but ill need readers for all close work, including computer which I am on all the time! My huge pupils(an easy 8mm or more) also plays a factor. I would lose some night vision, could be a little or alot. I might experience ghosting, glare and halos in dim, indoor lighting too. Then my mild dry eyes could become alot worse for months afterwards.

I wear contact lenses ( -7.00 OU ). I perfer contacts to glasses. I have the best all around vision,with no distortion,that I always got from Glasses. I have worn Contacts starting with hard (PMMA) lenses. Gas Perm lenses in the 70's and 80's. Soft lenses in the 90's. and Extended wear silcon lenses the last 6 years. I made up my mind to make these lenses work for me. And with the help of my Optometrist, we have been very succesful. Presbyopia, has not been a problem with monovision. One has to accept what the brain is capable of doing, that is letting the brain pick the vision, near or far,to see what you want to see. If binocular vison for depth perception is needed for driving, a compensating glasses Rx can easily be worn over the monovision CLs. The same is true for computer and reading. So you "see" being mypoia has not been a problem for me, and I'm sure, for alot of myopic people.

Perhaps, it comes down to " a visual point of View". If we are so full of "insight", and seem to let our "myopia" dictate our behavior to a "narrow minded" opinion, we will always have an over concern about our "visual life."
The answer is to accept what are eyes are capable of doing. To know that the myopia can be fully corrected and that we can function with normal vision. If we behave as a myope, than we will always lose the fullness of open and "total vision".

I hope this is taken in a positive way. We are what we "see",no matter what are refractive error my be. After 63 years, myopia,only exists in my eyes,not in my brain. "Point of View". :)

Eyestwo22

thanks for the long, informative response. Keep them comming :)

bump for more responses

I'm not quit sure of the responces you may be looking for. However, I have a feeling that it may be in the area of your over consern about your myopia. You seem to have an abundance of knowledge about the phyical aspects of myopia. The degree of refractive error, over and under correction, wearing glasses part time to "strangen the eye",seem to be your "needs" to help you deal with myopia. I suggested in my other post,that myopia is just a simple state of eye. Oh,yea, you can say it is a pure structure of an eyeball that is just to "Big or Large" in length. So light rays will always come to focus in front of the retina (macula). Pehaps, we need to accept this basic principle, and just go on with dealing with the best possible correction. (Glesses, Contacts,or Refractive surgery). The myopic eye sees best at near. Therefore,our visual imput may be structued. That is to say, our "out look" on things my have a limited "point of view". The myopic person has to learn how to deal with his/her "perspective" and work toward "opening up" a full and "total view" of their life.

Remember that "eye sight" is just 20/20. But, "Vision" is learned,and comes from "what the brain SEES" :)

Eyestwo22

What im looking is sorts of a survey. The title says it all. My first post states that im a glasses wearer

I'm a glasses wearer because of dry eyes.
But contacs work better because the lens is on the eye and there' peripheral vision, plus they don't get wet and spotty in rain and snow.

What pescription are you for glasses? contacts? How true about the not getting wet thing but this isnt much of a problem for me. I also have mild dry eyes so contacts just arent comfortable

I just had cataract surgery, so my new glasses are going to be minimal prescription -- like a minus one in one eye and a minus .5 in the other, with a plus 1 in one eye for reading and computer, and the other eye less but with astigmatism correction.
But from about 1966 until June of this year I was between a minus 5 and a minus 6.
I'm not sure about the contacs, but I think they were similar prescription. If not for the dry eyes, I would have worn contacs instead of getting the surgery so soon -- they gave much better vision than my glasses -- and I loved my glasses.
But when I recently wore contacs to help me decide if I wanted my cataract replacement lenses to be monovision or both eyes close or both eyes far, I had to put drops in my eyes several times every hour.