My Eyes Suck

When I was 10 the eye doctor told my mom I would likely go blind by age 18 if I didn't start immediately wearing hard contacts.  Back then contacts were a big deal.  I was the only kid my age wearing them, and one of the only people I've ever known who wore hard ones.  Without corrective vision, I have almost always been legally blind, but could see fine once I got contacts.  I still had to get new ones every few months or so because my vision continually worsened.

By the time I was 25 I wondered if maybe I had exaggerated that part about being told I would go blind, because A.) that sounds silly, and B.) I never went blind.  Two summers ago I talked to an eye doctor who suggested I try switching to soft contacts.  I never knew how how awful hard contacts were until I tried soft ones.  They felt like satin pillows on my eyes compared to the hard ones, and once I tasted how wonderful my eyes could feel, I couldn't go back.  That was in May.  The doctor would special order trial pairs for me and then I would come back to have them checked a week later.  I literally was at the eye doctor every 1-2 weeks until after New Years, having to order new contacts each time.  My eyes got worse and worse and worse.  He said that was somewhat normal at first, but then it got out of control. At one point he told me I am the only documented case of someone's eyes changing so drastically in such a short amount of time the way mine did.  In two weeks my eyes deteriorated more than the average person's eyesight does in a lifetime.  He had to contact manufacturers and specialists because I was the first documented case of this.  I wish that came with my name in a textbook and subsequently, a hefty check.  He said that when I was 10, doctors thought hard contacts would stop my eyes from getting worse because the hard contact presses against the eye and does not allow it to change very much.  This, they thought, would prevent the otherwise inevitable: my eyes deteriorating until I have no vision left.

Research has since taught them that that only prevents the eye from changing while hard contacts are being worn.  Once they are no longer being used, the eye transforms at a rapid rate to the degenerated state it would have otherwise been in if hard contacts had not been used to postpone the loss of vision in the first place.  My eyes finally leveled out after months and months of readjusting to new prescriptions.  Recently they decided to change very quickly again, and they are at a -11.  It's -13 that they stop making contacts in that strength, so I am getting dangerously close to blindness.  My eye doctor tries to reassure me but he acts more nervous each time he looks at my eyes.  They don't carry contacts at the strength mine are now, but they can be custom made, at least for a while longer.  As a result, I have these debilitating headaches several times a week that sometimes 3 Ibuprofen can't even budge.  I'm tired of not being able to read road signs or look at the computer without getting nauseous.   My husband is too handsome for me to go blind!  Dear God, I promise to read more and watch less TV if you keep me from going blind.

This is the closest example that I could find of what my eyes are like before and after I take out my contacts:

BEFORE

AFTER