First, I want to record that I just completed my weekly thank you note.
Second, I had an enhancement to the LASIK procedure yesterday. My distance vision in my right eye was not as crisp and sharp as I would like, so I took advantage of the guarantee from my original procedure. Within one year of the original procedure I can get an enhancement for a very discounted rate. The procedure was very minimal, uneventful, and so far I think it has improved the acuity of my distance vision. This time, it hurt a lot more, though.
Now, onto the story. The LASIK procedure had me thinking about my personal history of my vision.
My vision started to deteriorate when I was in middle school - puberty I guess. I got my first glasses in seventh grade. I was actually happy to get them because I really couldn't see too well by the time I got them.
It was the early eighties. I got lovely pink plastic framed glasses. The larger the better....back then...
My parents took me and my siblings to a very specialized eye doctor. Dr. L was an ophthalmologist and pediatric eye surgeon. Back when my sister was born, she had a congenital muscular problem with one of her eyes, and Dr. L had performed surgery to correct it. The surgery was successful, and as far as I know, my sister never had any problems related to that issue. Of course Dr. L followed up with my sister over the years, so when it was time for the other children in the family to go see an eye doctor, we just went to Dr. L.
Going to Dr. L's office was an ordeal. He was extremely busy: getting basic eye exams once a year literally took all day. You had to wait that long in the office. For a child, it was torture - not only did you have to wait around for hours, they put a series of stinging drops in my eyes to dilate them for examination. As a specialist, Dr. L made his patients take every test every time. It was thorough and very tedious.
Because he was a specialist, Dr. L conducted medical research. He developed a hypothesis about the development of myopia in children and adolescents. Both my sister and I were involved in the clinical research to test this hypothesis. The study involved disabling one eye using atropine to see if it slowed the development of myopia.
Atropine instilled in the eye dilates the pupil and makes it impossible to focus close up. You can still see distance in the eye - it was essentially paralyzed. At the time, I was too young to comprehend the full scope of the research, and my understanding was that if I used the drop, maybe my nearsightedness wouldn't get as bad as it otherwise would have developed.
Every night I would instill one drop of atropine in one eye for 6 months, then go into the office and get checked, then switch over to the other eye for 6 months. From my perspective, I remember two things: it made me look weird having one pupil dilated and one pupil normal; and, I had to get used to using the non-paralyzed eye for near vision. These were minor inconveniences, though - in fact, most people didn't notice my divergent pupils unless they stared at me in the eye for a while or if I opened my eyes really wide under bright light. Moreover, it wasn't that hard to adjust to reading with one eye. The brain compensates in short order.
The one dilated pupil was really pretty freaky looking. Like David Bowie.
Another thing I remember about this study was how sensitive the dilated eye was to bright light. That was annoying in the summertime, playing outside. When dosing the eye, occasionally, the atropine would seep down the tear duct and to the back of my throat, and I would taste it. Yuk.
In the end I don't think his study proved anything. I still ended up very nearsighted (and so did my sister). The atropine would slow the development of nearsightedness in that eye, but as soon as I stopped putting the drops in, that eye would rapidly deteriorate to catch up with the other. Just can't fight genetics, I guess.
My participation in that study didn't seem to have any ill effects on me. Maybe my eyesight would have been even worse if I didn't do it.
Finally, being a patient of Dr. L skewed my understanding of eye doctors. I thought they were all overbooked and it always took months to get an appointment. I thought you had to do all the tests every time. Then, as an adult, I discovered optometrists. Surprisingly, they're good enough for routine eye care, and you don't have to plan a whole day for an eye appointment! What a concept!
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