Dry Eyes

I have needed glasses since I was a sophomore in high school. Actually I probably needed them for several years before then but didn't realize it. From the moment the Doctor put the glasses on my face I hated them. But at the same time I really liked being about to see clearly. My desire to see immediately over threw my vanity and I started wearing my glasses daily.

As time past I found more and more reasons to hate wearing my glasses. But never enough of them to offset my desire to see clearly. I could never understand people who would only wear their glasses when they needed them to drive. I could just not imagine going through the day seeing everything blurry.

But still my hatred for my glasses continued. I hated the way they bounced on my face when I ran. I hated that I could never wear sunglasses. I had to wear dorky looking clip-ons. I hated the way my glasses fogged over when ever I started sweating. Most of all I hated the pain they caused every time I got hit in the head or face while playing sports. Getting hit hurt enough without the added injury of having the frames ground into my face.

I considered contact lenses several time but could never afford them. Eventually I got out of college and became a working engineer. But even as I was struggling through a soccer and volleyball leagues with my glasses it didn't occur to me that I could now afford contacts. I had pretty much forgotten all about them.

Then one day I got my first tax return and I was trying to figure out what to spend it on. That evening, during a soccer practice I attempted to head a ball to a teammate. I miscalculated my jump and ended up hitting the ball too low on my forehead. The subsequent impact drove my glasses so hard onto my nose that they tore the bridge of my nose wide open. It took me almost 20 minutes to get the bleeding to stop.

The next morning I was treating my wounds in the mirror and I suddenly knew what to spend my tax return on. I called that very morning and made an appointment to be fitted for soft contact lenses.

I have been wearing contacts now for 25 years. While they have been higher maintenance and cost than my glasses I have never considered going back to glasses.

Now suddenly my eyes seem to be rejecting my contacts. I have developed dry eye. I am in the process of determining if the contact lenses are causing the problem or something else. Today I saw the Doctor and we rejected the fourth pair of contact lenses that I have tried this summer. This means that I have spent most of the summer wearing my glasses while my eyes recover from the trauma of wearing contacts. This experience has reminded me of everything I have ever hated about wearing my glasses.

Several friends have suggested that I consider Lasik surgery. I have never given it much thought because I was doing so well with contact lenses. But now that may be changing. Since it is looking like I may not be able to wear contacts again I am suddenly becoming very interested in the Lasik procedure. However it will be several weeks before my eyes recover enough to determine if I can have the surgery or not. If my eyes turn out to be too dry it will take several months of treatments to try and get my eyes moisturized enough to try the surgery.

So the result of this is, after wearing my glasses on and off all summer it looks like I will have to wear them most of the fall also. I am really dreading this. Since volleyball starts next week at the middle school I am trying to figure out how I can do my coaching job without getting hit in the face or head with a volleyball. It doesn't happen often. But considering the amount of time I spend out on the court while my middle school girls are hitting volleyballs it is only a matter of time before one of them miss-hits a ball and I get slammed in the face. It has happened several times before, I'm sure it will eventually happen again. I just hope my glasses will survive an assault. They have been soldered together a couple times already and I don't really want to buy a new pair if I'm heading towards getting rid of them forever in the near future.