So from 14 years old I wore glasses and hated them! Then before I married, I got contact lenses in 1971. Even though it was great not having glasses I was to have various problems with infections etc over the next 25 years. Then in the mid 1990s I suffered a detached retina and after the painful treatment I vowed it would be a long time before I put a lens in my eye. (there was no medical reason to stop wearing the contacts...it was all in my head...) Unfortunately my specs now had very thick lenses...horrible!!!
 |
| I think this photo shows how thick the lenses were; especially the right one |
Any way back to 2009...I was not able to get an appointment until July. By then I had been pondering how I would still be able to afford the high price that my specs had become when I had retired. Even with private health insurance, I still had to pay $450+ and often every year or 18 months. I knew that my eyesight was 'too bad' to completely cure with laser surgery but I thought it could improve my sight so that the specs would be thinner and possibly because of that I wouldn't need all these 'extras' that used to camouflage the thickness. I decided I was going to ask the doctor about laser surgery. When I did, he deflated me by saying it wouldn't work for me. But then he said that I had cataracts developing on both eyes. That explained the 2 instances that year when I awoke with blurred vision that lasted till morning tea break. Because I had cataracts my health fund would pay all the expenses for inter-ocular implants. These implants are often done on people with poor vision but they are charged nearly $3000 per eye and the health funds don't pay out. The doctor promised me that 'I would be a new woman'... and he was right. I had one eye done at a time with 5 days between. Within hours of the op I could see out of that eye. I had to lie in a darkened room for a few days and had to use drops constantly. A few days after the second op I woke up in the morning and realised that I could see a neighbour's garden down the road a bit! I had become so shortsighted over the years that I saw nothing clearly beyond 6 inches from my face...
One thing though, I couldn't things close up. The doctor said to buy reading glasses of 2.5 magnification from the chemists, which I did and they were great! Then a friend said that the 'cheap shops' have reading glasses for as little as $4! So I checked them out and bought some of those. Now I have a pair beside the computer, beside the bed, on the kitchen bench, on my sewing table, on the coffee table in the lounge and a few pairs in handbags. My former hairdresser used to call me 'Elton' because every time I had my hair done I had a different pair of lairy glasses to put on to read the mags!
 |
| My 2.5 reading glasses bought over the counter. This collection ranges in price from $4 to $20. A lot different from the full priced $700 ones I used to have! |
