Corrective Lenses: The Exhaustive Poll

I do not understand the question. It's all blurry.

glasses for driving, watching tv, walking around. holla at my nearsighted homies

Progressive lenses, which I guess is "I wear eyeglasses with bifocals, trifocals, or graduated lenses." Still find myself peeking over the top from time to time to read stuff though.

Haha. This is funny. I voted for: Hoo-boy! Let me tell you all about my vision problems. You got an hour to spare?

Yep. I was born with severe eye problems. So, I had to undergo three eye surgeries on both eyes in the first 15 years of my life. One eye is fine. The other eye will eventually go blind unless I undergo more surgeries.

I was one of those kids people make fun of (especially on this board, it seems like) that used to wear really nerdy glasses and looked socially awkward and like a weirdo.

I also own large, thick, black horn-rimmed glasses that are so popular these days. Except I hate wearing glasses, so I never wear any of my glasses, except my sunglasses when the sun physically hinders my vision (e.g., when driving), but even then, I don't like to wear them. Because due to my condition and surgeries I am sensitive to natural light.

In that case shouldn't your name be albino hexagon?

for real tho, I am a little nearsighted. I do ok without my glasses & wear them whenever I feel like it, which is most of the time. I also own a pair of prescription sunglasses, which I would wear all the fucking time if society permitted it

James, haha. I don't have albinism. That must be quite sad to have, though.

I've never got the impression that this was some kinda school bully board, where are you getting that from? I bet there's no shortage of nerdy glasses-wearers here!

Progressive lenses

My vision alternates between 7/4 and 5/4.

i have one short- and one long-sighted eye but to be honest they mostly just cancel each other out? So I don't wear my glasses as much as I ought, though anyone who borrows my glasses to try them on finds them super weird (i have an astigmatism too, it's all going on).

I wear glasses most of the time since my mid-20s, can just about navigate the world without them. Wear contacts for running.

I wear eyeglasses except for reading and other close work (I'm nearsighted).

Except that I wear eyeglasses for reading and other close work too bc I'm extremely nearsighted. I didn't see an option for that, however.

w/out glasses i have to read so close to the page that i go cross-eyed from holding the object too close to my eyes

I'm nearsighted.

i keep trying to talk myself into getting the surgery ($ + fear of complications stopping me atm)

I've got a ten foot bubble around me where I have perfect vision. Anything out of that bubble appears blurry unless I squint.

So I only wear my glasses when I'm driving or walking or pushing a grocery cart. Eating, reading, working at the computer, mowing the yard... all done with no glasses on my face.

Yeah what Mordy said, wheres the option for "I'm blind as a bat and wear glasses for all occasions"?

Tho Im starting to head twards the land of the bifocal lens in my increasing dotage.

I need glasses (usually) or contacts for everything but don't wear bifocals, trifocals, or graduated lenses. None of these options fits me but I don't think my situation is that exceptional!

xpost!

Ah, Mordy got there first.

got glasses in third grade, got contacts in ninth, got disposables ten years ago. mad nearsighted + astigmatism, but at my checkup last year my eyesight got better! i guess my nearsightedness is being balanced by the farsighted tendencies of aging.

my correction is a little too extreme for laser surgery, but i'm fine with disposable contacts (i leave them in pretty much all the time, tsk). also a friend suffered complications.

Progressive lenses now, used to wear contacts. Had surgery recently to restore my vision - nothing like lasik, just scraping the outer layer off both corneas. Vision with glasses is now back to 20/20 (was 20/80 or something prior, couldn't safely drive, constant headaches, but could still read).

I wd also vote the Mordy option.

I'm nearsighted and a few years ago I'd take my glasses off for reading (books or the screen) but now my eyes get tired easily at pretty much any useful distance.

I really need to see my optom again asap, my vision's changed enough that my current glasses arent too great anymore. Im getting an alarming number of floaters in my vision too which worries me.

Yeah what Mordy said, wheres the option for "I'm blind as a bat and wear glasses for all occasions"?

I'm guessing "Hoo-boy! Let me tell you all about my vision problems. You got an hour to spare?" is the closest to what you want. Maybe?

I thought my eyesight was getting worse so I went for a test recently, but apparently all is perfectly fine. I definitely get weird things where I can't focus on stuff, though, or get visual confusion a lot when I'm outside. Wondering if it's either eye strain from computer use, where I *can* see fine, but have to get used to it, or maybe the concentration/confusion difficulties stem from my stupid mental health problems?

But needing glasses all the time is a really commonplace, banal vision problem!

Hm, yeah, looking at the options again I see what you mean. Ah well.

Discovered one of the inventors of LASIK practiced in my hometown. Paid twice the going rate, but I can read street signs 3-4 blocks away 14 years later.

Oh, formerly I couldn't past about 8 inches from my face.

Been wearing glasses since I was nine, contacts since I was 14. Last time I got glasses I asked why they didn't use the reduced-thickness lenses like I'd asked for. "Those are the reduced-thickness lenses." Ah, so I'm blinder than I thought.

Tri-focals (I think--they're more than just bi-focals) + "Hoo-boy." Of my various body-breaking-down fears at 51, where my vision will be in 10 years is my biggest. I got my glasses in grade 3 or 4. Tried contacts for a few months in my 20s, but I couldn't adjust. I started a thread on this problem a couple of years ago: Floaters. That never went away, although I don't notice it much anymore.

i wouldn't say that 'hoo boy' is true but i'm another glasses all the time person, i can technically read without them but holding books eight inches from my face isn't ideal. it's debilitating to the point where i would quite like to get surgery, BUT i enjoy glasses as a stylish accessory. should i ever have enough money where surgery seems a reasonable option, i'll have to tell em to do it a bit wrong.

Very near-sighted.

BTW, you forgot hybrid hard/soft lenses. I tried them out, but I had a terrible time getting them on to the point that they scratched my corneas and I had to use antibiotic eyedrops for a few days.

Started wearing glasses in 4th grade, 29 years ago. Switched to contacts in 1987 and wore those daily until last November when I got new eyeglasses and started wearing them every day as my eyes had started to feel really fried after wearing contacts all day.

My contacts were -7.5 and -9, and I have only ever met two people with worse prescriptions than mine. I'm so nearsighted that if I take off my glasses I must remember where I put them as I am incapable of finding them again; I can't read anything without them unless it's about 2 inches from my eyes.

Glasses all the time, ever worsening astigmatism and a little bit nearsighted in one eye. Astigmatism means I have dreadful night vision (once while driving at night I casually mentioned that I couldn't really see the lines on the road and the passenger's reaction is what made me realize that most people aren't guessing where they should be pointing the car). Considered surgery but just don't want it. Dislike contacts but thinking of getting them again because I get tired of wearing glasses sometimes.

My skin is too oily for glasses so I wear dailies. I love how people look with glasses, always so put together and effortless. I feel I need to do my hair a certain way, wear clothing that matches my glasses or compliments them...really terrible at all that. Contacts are a bad habit for me, pricey. I found out I see better in the dark and drive better with glasses than I do with contacts though. I envy all of you who wear your frames so well.

contacts are p. sweet imo. better than overalls for sure

I love how people look with glasses, always so put together and effortless.

haha where were you when i was in grade school/junior high

My skin is too oily for glasses

you need glasses that fit better (not kidding)

Hahah where is, "My vision is so bad I learned at a young age to tell people apart by their size and coloration?" To this day I can be briefly confused by someone the same size and hair-color as an acquaintance.

ha. I am a seriously uncoordinated person and I think it's because I spent a long time in my childhood devising tricks to get along despite not being able to see anything. It's hard to come up with those tricks in long-distance precise activities like sports, so, basic skills like catching never really learned. It was only noticed that I maybe couldn't see quite right when in my third year of school for the first time I wasn't sitting at the front of the class, and the teacher thought maybe something was up when I always had to leave my chair and walk up to the blackboard to see what was written on it.

yr user name says it all

2 true.

i have okay vision but get a headache if i don't wear glasses, also i hate my face

I was going to vote "near-sighted" because I am, but I think my astigmatism is a bigger contributor to my inability to see than the nearsightedness, so maybe that makes me "hoo boy".

carl, I've been having driving lessons for a while but I've never quite understood how people are happy to go driving in the dark, so I think you may have a point! I know it's time to get new glasses when I'm waiting for a bus in the dark and I can't read the numbers on the front of buses because there are too many halos and "starbursts" coming off car headlights and streetlamps.

friend of mine has eyesight poor enough that night looks virtually pitch black to her. she only discovered this was a problem recently when she nearly stacked her car.

I'm another person who is bog-standard short sighted but wears glasses all the time. Except when I wear contact lenses but that is quite rare because I hate putting them in. I usually only do that if I'm going to a gig where it is likely someone may crowdsurf into my face (I've lost 2 pairs of glasses and badly damaged another one due to that).

Ugh the halos and starburst s are the pits. I like living in the city where there's lots of light pollution so it's less noticeable.

I'm so bad at putting in contacts, too. I don't think I've ever put them in without dropping at least one in the sink first. Also there was the drunken night I kept trying to take one out only to realize after far too long a time of pinching my eyeball that I had gotten it out in the first pass. Traumatizing. I would like them for the gym and Halloween and the occasional night out or hot days when I do not want anything on my face.

watching fireworks with one contact lens in and one out is pretty cool

I sometimes like taking off my glasses during boring meeting or lectures because then everything goes fuzzy and I feel pleasantly removed from whatever dumb thing I'm stuck doing.

Yeah, not wearing glasses when having to speak to a large group of people or playing onstage works very well for me.

did the surgery like 10 years ago.
no vision problems what so ever, though lately i suspect a boredeline vision.

My eyesight is awful, but in a totally correctable way - I'm incapable of functioning without corrective lenses but everything is 100% correctable - no halos or night issues or anything. I'm pretty thankful for that.

Also kind of bragging but I'm SO GOOD at putting contacts in and out that it's like a ten second procedure. I did the math and realized i've put them in and out probably 18,000 times in my life.

It's been six years or so since I've tried, but it seriously takes me at least ten minutes and 60% of the time I fuck up a contact in the process.

i only wear contacts maybe 50% of days (and sometimes go months/years without any if i can't afford them), putting them in isn't too bad. but i have long eyelashes that act like goalies trying to keep the contacts out.

jg, I saw some hungover dude on the train a few weeks ago (it was a very cold Saturday morning and he was in his business casual shirtsleeves, and also he was exuding from every poor) with a bottle of saline solution in his pocket and he sat down and performed some contact lens maintenance like it was nothing. I was impressed. Also a little grossed out because he smelled like a bar mat, but that is unrelated.

Anyway, I feel like that is a super power that you would also have.

Also kind of bragging but I'm SO GOOD at putting contacts in and out that it's like a ten second procedure. I did the math and realized i've put them in and out probably 18,000 times in my life.

I can put mine in without a mirror with less than half-light.

Once while on a solo road trip I took a lens out, put it my mouth to "clean" it, and put it back in while driving. I did the same thing on a ski lift once as well. It's one of the world's least useless super powers.

This thread has really made me marvel at how I've been effectively blind without corrective lenses for 75% of my life and how much of my daily routine has been influenced by this.

near sighted, i'm a goddamn four eyes. i got stabbed in the eye when i was a kid so i'm squishy about putting stuff in my eye, too much so to really consider contacts. plus part of me worries about getting some parasite and ending up deformed like momus so no way to contacts.

And finally there's the first mention of him.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyehe0TubK1qi8mhro1_500.gif

i'm short-sighted, my eyesight didn't deteriorate for 20-odd years when i used my glasses sparingly tho. i don't know if my decision to wear them 24/7 was brought on by some weakening in old age or whether wearing glasses all the time has weakened my vision. can't read with them on now tho, unless i hold the book at arm's length.

I have pretty dire eyesight, -7.5 in each one (can't see much beyond the tip of my nose). My eyes are perfectly healthy but I can't get surgery as my pupils are too large when dilated(so at night I would have blurs around the outside of my vision) and current technology wouldn't be able to fix the issue because of the amount of tissue they need to remove.

A related question: if you could have the lenses in your eyeballs replaced with artificial lenses that corrected your vision, would you?

Sure!

I think so but I am totally squeamish about sharp things and eyes so I might need it to happen under general anaesthetic or just, like, be magically teleported into my eyes

(I also haven't had laser eye surgery because I'm too afraid it would go wrong and make it worse, not better)

who has stories of successful surgery? part of me wants to try, and part of me is like 'but glasses are fine, you've always had glasses, why do you want to not have glasses. your face will look all funny.'

A coworker of mine had surgery a year and a half ago and she's doing great and loves it.

"My vision is so bad I learned at a young age to tell people apart by their size and coloration?"
I started with glasses in the 6th grade but hated them...my bangs were too short and I wore gold colored, wire rimmed glasses, cheap whatevers I picked out at TSO...yerch.
So I did my best to go without them and was pretty successful even as my eyesight got worse. I was able to recognize people by their gait and had a " sixth sense", so I thought. I convinced myself I had "special powers" to navigate without them. Then one day my grandmother took me to the mall in the "big city" to go shopping and I ended up losing her but didn't know it for awhile. I was following some other, older Hispanic woman of the same weight and height wearing grey pants and a red shirt. It was horrible. I was lost for almost two hours and finally had to ask the information desk to page her. I was 15 and just too blind to get around!

Voted 'I wear eyeglasses except for reading and other close work (I'm nearsighted).' except I just wear em all the time because I am very myopic, and it doesn't actually make a difference for close reading.

extremely short-sighted, wear glasses on day-to-day basis and soft/disposable contact lenses when going out

i've worn contacts for over a decade so i'm used to them, they're still the bane of my life in some respects

Just got a new pair of glasses after my latest eye exam. I'm nearsighted, been wearing glasses since my sophomore year of college when I realized I couldn't see the board/screen in lecture halls. It's getting to where, if I leave my glasses on, I can't read print close up, so my next pair will probably be bifocal or progressive lenses.

Near-sighted, just leave my glasses on all the time. I can read fine either with or without them, and it's too much trouble to keep taking them off. I've been told that eventually that won't work and i'll need bifocals or the like, but I'll deal with that when it happens.

I didn't wear glasses at all until I was about 23, and it took a while for me to adjust my self-image to "guy who wears glasses." But now they're practically part of my face. I have to manually check sometimes to make sure they're still on.

My skin is too oily for glasses so I wear dailies.

― *tera, Saturday, March 30, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you need glasses that fit better (not kidding)

― mookieproof, Saturday, March 30, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wait. This has been me with my most recent two pairs of glasses. Oil just leaps off my skin and splatters all over the lenses all the damn time, but I've never considered my skin to be that oily. Elaborate on "fit better".

who has stories of successful surgery

As mentioned above, I went through the first 28 years of my life with coke-bottle thick glasses, or irritating gas permeable hard contacts, being able to focus only about 20 cm from my eyes unaided. Radial keratonomy had too many side effects, and LASIK was new, but once LASIK seemed proven I made an appointment with one of the opthamologists who pioneered the technique. He charged about twice what the LASIK shops just beginning to open up in malls did, but it was well worth it. The battery of tests to determine my preoperative vision curvatures was pretty extensitve (big room with a half dozen machines to look into).

Once under the LASIK machine, and after the corneal surface of my left eye had been peeled back, I went had a nervous eye twitching (nystagmus) which is normally a contraindication for the procedure. The doc had little choice but to continue with on the one eye, and so concentrated on the blurry red light as never before. The one eye was much better than 20/20 within 3 days. I returned for LASIK on my right eye a week later, this time under the influence of a couple of Valium from my grandmother cache, and things went smoothly.

I've now had 14 years of very clear vision from 5 cm out to infinity (I can identify moon craters by naked eye), and consider the operation the best money I've ever spent. I've only experienced one side effect which is a slight haloing around oncoming headlights when driving - this is a result of iris dilation permitting light from uncorrected edge of the cornea, and a slight squinting solves the issue.

I have had 20/10 vision my entire life and I am terrified for the point in my late 50s/early 60s when I will begin to need glasses

Sometimes I miss the appearance of erudition my glasses gave me. Not enough to buy fake glasses.

Wear both glasses and soft contacts, depending on how hot I think I'd look behind the glasses.

I am one of the "I am so nearsighted I need glasses to read" people.

My cousins had LASIK. One was fine, the other need another surgery or two for it to work. I also know of someone who had it and went blind in one eye.

just got new glasses to replace my old scratched one, this is better than surgery, i feel like a superdude

Started wearing glasses at age 4 and then switched to contact lenses when I turned 20. Eyes are terrible -- supposedly in some states I qualify as legally blind w/o some sort of corrective lenses.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I wear contacts out cuz I'm vain.

Weirdly, I think I look better in glasses than out of them. But maybe its just because I'm so used to them?