I Can See Clearly Now - Sort Of

Today I picked up my new prism glasses. One of the effects of my MTBI was double vision. It occurs primarily on my right side and is generally from about one foot away from my face to about 10-15ft away. This is supposed to be one of those "easy" fixes, which, in the world of brain injuries is like winning the lottery.

Easy is a matter of opinion.

I was appallingly myopic prior to the accident; legally blind without glasses. Now I'm nearsighted and have double vision. I also found reading and writing very difficult as I had problems focusing and would get headaches and tire easily. Some text was just unreadable. Certain sizes and types of fonts just didn't seem to agree with me at all. There were texts assigned for some of my classes that I just couldn't read, no matter how hard I tried.

At first I thought the reading issue was an attention problem. I didn't even know that vision could be affected in so many different ways.

So now I have three new pairs of glasses. I have the "Reading" glasses that are the prisms which correct for the double vision. Essentially, they bend my vision to re-align what I'm seeing. That doesn't even really explain it correctly but it's close. What I see without them is much like looking though one of those old dual lens cameras, the kind you where you had to align the images in order to focus, except my images aren't quite aligned. These reading glasses are meant to be worn OVER my contact lenses.

The second, is a pair of distance glasses. These are my normal prescription without the prisms. These are find for daily wear if I'm not doing much reading or close work - painting, etc.

The third pair is a combo. These are progressive lenses (bi-focals without the line) with the distance prescription on top and the prisms on the bottom. The idea with these is that I can wear them if I know I'll be reading during the day. These correct for the doubling but I can use them without wearing my contacts.

So, while it may be an easy fix, I now have three different pairs of glasses that I need to manage. Since organization is one of the MTBI challenges, this will be as well. I'm hoping that establishing homes for these glasses will make that easier, and getting into a routine with putting them back when I'm wearing my contacts will help.

My only organizational/storage issues will be with the reading glasses. Since I'll be wearing these with my contacts and won't always be reading or studying in the same place I will have to keep track of where these glasses are at all times. This will probably necessitate designating several places, one in the office, one in the bedroom, one in the den, where the readers "live" when they're not on my nose. That way, I know where to look, and if they're not in any of those three places THEN I will know they are legitimately lost and can go into panic and search mode.

Since this is my first day with the glasses, I'll have to wear the progressive pair for several days to see if they will really work for me. I'll admit that at first they took some getting used to. There is a bit of a fish-eye effect with the prisms, and my mid range was still doubling a bit when I first put them on. At the moment I've been wearing them for several hours and no head-aches so far which is an encouraging sign. I will just have to give it some time and see how I do driving and adjusting from focusing on near and far objects.