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Current Location: Flagstaff, AZ

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bitch bitch bitch

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I sometimes get sort of bitchy when people complain about their glasses. I actually feel bad about this, because not being able to see sucks all around, but I can't always help it, and suddenly I realized I could use THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY to demonstrate why. This is a charming photograph of some trees, and how I suspect it'd look to people who can actually see.

This is how the photograph looks to most people I hear bitching about their glasses, their contacts, or their inability to see the classroom whiteboard, I know because usually their uncorrected vision is around the same as my corrected vision right now. These are the people who sometimes go, "Oh, I forgot to bring my glasses to school today! Haha!" I sometimes hate these people.

And this is how things look for me. I know it's not that bad, -7.00 is considered severe but I think myopia can get to like, -20.00 or some outrageously high number. BUT IT STILL SUCKS. I just had to go back to the doctor to rule out a degenerative eye disorder, because your eyes are supposed to stop getting worse by the time you're twenty or so, but mine aren't and I need a new prescription and now reading glasses. I'm sort of worried that my eyes are going to get worse and worse for my whole life and in a decade I'll have serious problems rather than the constant inconvenience my vision causes me now. It already affects pretty much every aspect of my life, what if it got worse, man.

Apparently a lot of people think that glasses make your eyes worse and if you didn't wear them, you would be fine! Oh, gee, thanks for that. Clearly I am doing this to myself and if I would only voluntarily shoulder a disability -- because if I didn't wear my glasses I'd be freaking disabled, there's no other way to put it -- I'd actually be cured! Awesome.

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Man, I'm almost as bad as you. My eyes are at about -6.75, I believe, and without my glasses or contacts in, I can't even see a half of a foot in front of my face. My mum can have her glasses off for almost everything but driving, and I get insanely jealous every time she's like "whoop, forgot them! Oh well! :D"

And pfffft. Those people need to be smacked upside the head. :| If I could see at all without my glasses or contacts, I'd be quite happily not wearing them, instead of being blind as a bat without them.

Yeah, me, too. Sometimes I feel like I should try going with them anyway, just so I know how to, like, survive without them if I had to, but it's just way too hard.

WTFever. I had to BUY myself new glasses, after I stop wearing them for a year. :|

Glad I did, didn't realize how bad my eyes were.

YOUR VISION SURELY IMPROVED WHILE YOU WERE WITHOUT, RIGHT? IT WAS LIKE EXERCISE.

I'm just here to use this icon.

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I hate my glasses, because they can easily become lost and then I'm fucked. Contacts aren't much more awesome because they hurt so fucking much. I VERY OFTEN WISH I COULD JUST SEE MAN.

.... Dude. They need to shut up about glasses. It's not that bad.

NOT USUALLY, NO.

...I know training your eyes does help, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't actively make your eyes better, it just retards degneration.

PEOPLE ARE DUMB.

I don't think it even slows down degeneration for nearsightedness, I think it just makes it so you don't get as many headaches from eyestrain or something. I don't understand why these people think your eyes are like your BICEPS and seeing is just like STRENGTH.

...well, the reason your eyes work is because of a muscle around the lens that changes the curvature in order to focus on objects that are different distances away. So they're sort of half right? You can train that muscle, it does get fatigue, etc.

But there are obviously limits and pretending that you can fix everything that way is dumb.

EDIT: HERE IS A COOL PICTURE

but even if you train the ciliary muscle, the zonula (the ring of ligaments attached to the muscle that control the lens curvature more directly) can still be fucked up. so screw you, eye training dudes.

Edited 2009-09-27 06:02 (UTC)

I think the shape of your eye can be fucked up too, so the lens focuses on the image but then it doesn't, like, line up in focus with your retina? Anyhow if most people with vision problems just had problems with fatigue than I don't see how you could constantly see things the same bad way day after day, you'd think you'd get horrible variations with some days where you could almost see and then other days where no you can't.

Yeah, the shape of your eye changing is the problem most people have! THERE ARE A LOT OF EYE PROBLEMS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH CILIARY FATIGUE.

I wonder what's going wrong with mine now, since I'm apparently wrecking mine even worse with studying. I don't think that can have anything to do with the eyeballs changing shape. I really, really don't know enough about eye problems for how severe my vision problems are -- WHAT IS ASTIGMATISM, I was wondering earlier today as my doctor was ordering me new lenses. I WONDER IF IT IS IMPORTANT.

I think astigmatism roughly means that the lens is fucked up.

D:

Means it's uneven in shape, if I recall correctly? That's why you didn't used to be able to get contacts for it.

/checks Wikipedia

Astigmatism is an optical defect in which vision is blurred due to the inability of the optics of the eye to focus a point object into a sharp focused image on the retina. This may be due to an irregular or toric curvature of the cornea or lens. There are two types of astigmatism: regular and irregular. Irregular astigmatism is often caused by a corneal scar or scattering in the crystalline lens and cannot be corrected by standard spectacle lenses, but can be corrected by contact lenses. Regular astigmatism arising from either the cornea or crystalline lens can be corrected by a toric lens.

So before contacts, if you had the irregular kind you were just boned, I guess.

I figured out a long time ago that if I squeeze my eye, things get slightly clearer. So I always assumed it was lens shape or something.

I have not been able to make things clearer, but I've been able to squeeze my eyeballs closer together with my fingers and create bizarre funhouse effects!

AND IF YOU SQUISH YOUR HANDS REALLY HARD AGAINST YOUR CLOSED EYELIDS YOU GET PRETTY COLORS.

-9 here, whoo! When my glasses are out of commission, so am I.

Yuuup. When mine even just get knocked off or something I have to crawl across the ground pathetically feeling for them with my fingertips.

Hah, that happened when I woke up yesterday morning. Ten minutes of feeling around the floor, fun times. I have a love/hate relationship with my glasses, because it bothers me knowing how easily I could lose the ability to read/see people's faces/other things I am really dependent on.

Aha, for me this morning I was sleep talking about how mine were lost on the floor somewhere and apparently sent my sister looking for them. THEY WERE ACTUALLY FINE but clearly I even have nightmares about them.

I was going to say how outrageously clear the 3rd one was, then I realized you meant the PHOTOGRAPH and not in actual real life. Cuz something THAT far away would be like. One massive blob at best.

IDK, most people I know who bitch about their site are in that 3rd category along with you, but I think I just hang out with people who are as blind as me.

...That seeing.org site would be a lot more useful if I could possibly even distinguish letters and words on it without glasses.

...sight. not site. well, not the first time.

IT WAS A VAGUE REPRESENTATION I DID TO SHOW MY FAMILY HOW HORRIBLY I SEE SHIT because obviously if that'd be real life the closer stuff would be maybe that clear and the far away stuff would be basically nonexistent like you said I JUST HIT THE BLUR TOOL ON PHOTOSHOP MANY MANY TIMES.

Apparently the principle behind that site and others like that is that if you have glasses you must stop using them. Then you ... I don't even know, man. I'd have to quit school and my job without my glasses! I can't even shower, man!

Oh, and people who hang out on the Internet are more likely to be blind, IT IS PROVEN BY SCIENCE. No, seriously, there's a correlation between people of the geeky persuasion and prescription eyewear.

Yeah, my eyes are like -7.50 with astigmatism in both eyes. I like the pictoral demonstrations - they seem roughly accurate.

I hate those types of people, too. There is no way I could ever forget my glasses because if I don't have them on it's like "oh, I can't see a foot in front of my face."

The worst is in the morning when I need to put my glasses on, but because I don't have them on I can't see to find where next to my bed I placed them. I've had to ask for help before if my initial feeling around doesn't work. Otherwise if nobody is home I have to go and put in my contact so I can find my glasses.

I'm counting the days until LASIK is a practical option for me.

Edited 2009-09-27 08:03 (UTC)

Love the demo picture! It's hard to explain to people how my world looks, so I might save it for future use :)))

I've got -9.5 and -13.5 and wear glasses and live okay *G* In the past, I'd probably have been eaten by wild animals or fallen down large steeps and killed myself by now :/

"I'm sort of worried that my eyes are going to get worse and worse for my whole life and in a decade I'll have serious problems rather than the constant inconvenience my vision causes me now."

Out of my brain. >O

I think your eyes going bad might have to do with you being on the computer A LOT and in dim light. And I don't think wearing glasses so much makes yours eyes bad as it allows them to be lazy, as with no glasses they struggle all the time to see, but that causes headaches, no fun.

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