Contacts

I love it when the “expert” looks at me like I’m this mixed-up confused wrong person, and then I get to make them eat crow.

I went to the eye doctor yesterday to get more contacts.  I’d been reading on the internet about these contacts called Acuvue Moist.  They’re dailies, which are the only kind I will wear, because I refuse to mess with solution and cleaning.  Plus, since I only wear them for special events like my Renaissance Faires, they aren’t pricey for me.  These Moist ones sound awesome, because they’re made mostly of water, and don’t dry your eyes out at all.  Renfaires tend to be somewhat dusty affairs, so with my old contacts I was definitely feeling some discomfort by the end of a long day.

So I tell my doctor I want to get these Moist contacts, and she says they don’t exist.  She says she reads everything the contact companies send to her, and she hasn’t heard one word about anything called “Moist”.  She’s looking at me like I’m totally confused.  I don’t say anything more, I just let her get on with the exam, but I’m thinking I’ll just get the updated prescription from her, then order the new contacts myself off one of the discount internet sites.  Then I ask to try on some color-change contacts, so she leaves me along with a bunch of different colors to play with.  She leaves me along for so long that I get bored and start going through all her colored advertisements on the table.  Guess what one of the advertisements was for?  Yep.

She comes back, and I point out the add for Acuvue Moist contacts.  She’s pretty flustered and leaves to ask the other employee if they have any of those in stock.  She comes back in about a minute with some free samples of Moist contacts for me to take home and try out.  🙂  Moral of the story?  Never, ever trust your doctor to know anything.  They aren’t infalible, and they absolutely make mistakes.  Do your own research!

I received good news though: my eyesight has improved by three powers!  That means my plan of wearing my glasses as little as possible is working.  You see, the eye is just a muscle, and when you stop exercising it enough, you get either near or far-sighted.  I’m near-sighted, because nearly everything I like to do involves close up work (sewing, reading, writing).  I didn’t exercise that far-away vision, and so I began to lose it.  There are programs of exercises you can do to regain 20/20 vision, but I’m honestly too lazy to do them.  I just don’t wear my glasses at home, and I bought glasses that are high enough off my cheeks that I can look under the lenses when I’m reading at work, so that I’m not straining my eyes by looking through a prescription when I don’t need it.  Wearing your glasses all the time (if you don’t need to) is a guaranteed way of making your eyes worse over time.

And the colored contacts?  Meh.  The ones dark enough to turn my brown eyes blue slid around and put a blue haze over some of my vision.  It’s annoying.  They do have some that just add some “sparkle” to your normal color, but I wasn’t impressed enough to shell out the money.  One called “Moonlight” was pretty cool.  They gave my eyes a subtle silvery look, like wolf’s eyes.  And since it’s just an enhancer, not a complete chance-of-color, you don’t get the annoying vision haze if they slide a bit.  One weird thing, is that the trial lenses they give you to play with have the word “demo” or “test” written on about 1/3 of the lense.  It’s beyond weird to see writing on your eye!!!