Apparently my eyes went to shit overnight. Or if not overnight, then certainly within about a week or so.
Everything was fine at my last appointment (November) and up until about two months ago I never gave my vision a second thought. Then one weekend we were driving home on the highway and I noticed that some signs—that I’d normally have no problem reading—were blurry! I attributed it to dirty contacts and overtired eyes (not having gotten much sleep the previous two nights), so I just changed contacts when we got home and didn’t think much else about it.
Except that I started noticing my eyes getting dry or feeling like the contacts were dirty (and sometimes even painful)—after only maybe 5-7 hours of wear—with new to almost-new contacts…in other words, totally not normal. But I suffered through it for a while because I just hadn’t had eye/contact problems before and thought it was a passing thing.
But when a new pair of contacts bothered me after only a few hours of wear, I knew it was time to get checked out. A quick exam showed that my cornea had changed shape slightly, though that shouldn’t have caused the problems. I learned, however, that all contacts are different shapes and styles and what might have worked for me for two or four or eight years might suddenly sit the wrong way or rub a certain part of my eye (making it painful and impossible to wear comfortably) so maybe the cornea was the problem. So I got a pair of trial lenses (which felt better immediately) and made an appointment for a recheck in a week.
And they worked pretty well for a few days…until I noticed that my close vision was blurry. It was at night, so I thought maybe my eyes were just tired. But day after day it was the same, at all hours. WHAT? So I told the doc I had good news (the contacts felt fine) and bad news (now my vision was blurry).
Come to find out, he says I’m headed for bifocals and contacts may or may not help (I think he said they work for 60% of people)…but I’m not quite ready for those. So he gave me a different trial pair that would help more with my close up vision, though distances would be just a bit blurrier (but that my dominant eye would make up for it). Fine. And I left excited. Except my close vision is still blurry—and now, in addition, I get random blurry spots that move around. Which is very disturbing and annoying.
I do NOT want to wear glasses full time so I think we might have to try bifocal contacts (which are, of course, more expensive). At least I’ll get a trial pair of those as well to see if they work (before I have to buy a full set). I’ll get more info Monday when I go in for my second recheck.
Getting old sure sucks.