When examining my eyes, when we do the “which is clearer, this one or this one?” thing, we stop the test when we go through several iterations, and I’m always giving what I believe to be the correct answer, but at no time do I actually ever see a clear, ghost-free image.
Yes, we know that I have an astigmatism, and that coated lenses can help mitigate that, but have they solved astigmatism?
The problem is with distance vision, particularly at night when my pupils are much more open, but is distracting even in normal situations (meetings, watching TV from 8 feet away, etc.) I can certainly discern edges of things that are important, but I also see blurry ghost images, and sometimes the blurry ghost images are clear enough to be double images. What am I to do? How do I ask the ophthalmologist, “Well, we seem to be at the limits of your ability to help me; can you suggest someone better?”
Or am I actually always going to suffer? When I hear tales of Lasik patients getting “monovision,” wherein one eye is for distance and the other is for reading, I recoil in horror – this sounds like they’re accepting some measure of ghosts all the time! Are my standards too high because of 44 years of perfect vision? Or is there a better way? I have money. I will pay. But googling ghosts and optometry gives me very little in the way of useful links.
Anyone know where the “high-priced Wall Street professional sports & astronaut” opticians can be found?
Astigmatism isn’t helped by coated lenses. Astigmatism is when the focal length of one eye is different in two different directions. It’s helped by using corrective lenses that are themselves of different power along different directions, which are technically called toric lenses. If your problem is simple astigmatism, yes, it’s been solved. I’ve got astigmatism myself, and my glasses eliminate it, with no “ghosts”.
Both spherical (used when your eye’s error is uniform in all directions) and toric lenses are generally coated for protection, and sometimes for anti-reflection.
Your problem sounds like something beyond astigmatism. If you’re seeing distracting “ghosts” then there is some other issue present, and without further information I can’t tell you what it is.
The most obvious thing to do is to tell your eye doctor. Have you done so? If there;s anything beyoind astigmatism, such as a mis-shaped cornea, or imperfections in your eye, they can detect those. Depending upon what the problem is, they can often fix it. You shouldn’t have to go to the millionaire golfer’s eye guy to do this.
But the first step is to tell them that you have a problem. You may have alreadydone so, but your OP doesn’t indicate that you have…
Those words would seem to work, if you’ve already talked to him/her about your problem.
Yah; I was being lazy in that sentence. Coated lenses are supposed to help minimize sharp ghost images caused by internal reflections, and astigmatism causes the blurry ones. The glasses I get tend to reduce ghosts during those times that my eyes are the same shape as they were when I had the test that resulted in getting those glassesl, but my eyes seem to change shape throughout the day.
After lack of success at an optometrist, I’ve been going to an ophthalmologist for the past two years.
A similar thing happened when I had a rash on my ankle. Every HMO doctor and dermatologist I visited over two years tried more and more powerful anti-fungals, and I finally got fed up, asked friends for a reccommendation for a good dermatologist. He is expensive, but on the first visit, he said, “You have ecxzema. Use this cream twice a day.” Three days later it was gone. So, he was actually quite inexpensive.
I have ghosts always that are sometimes clear enough to be extra images. Glasses cannot correct it. I have keratoconus. See if you can find someone in your area that specializes in this to see if it’s your problem.