How Do People Who Really Need Glasses Cope Without Them?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Other than using contacts, I mean.

For example, I had great eye sight till I was about 45, now I see well, except I need reading glasses.

So today I was in Walgreens and I wanted to read the label on some ibuprofen so of course, I have to take the bottle over to the reading glasses section and “borrow” a pair to read the bottle.

But it got me to thinking, what about people who really need glasses to see at all. I mean what do you do if you’re in the shower,? Or take them off and put them on your night table and then the cat plays hockey with them during the night?

Do you just eventually learn to cope? Or do you switch to contacts? Or what?

2

Before I had lasik I was so nearsighted I was almost farsighted. Anything past an arm’s length was very blurry and forget any reading past half an arms length. But in most situations they were familiar blurs. I knew them well and so had little problems. Though finding lost glasses was a pain. However, maybe you mean people with even worse vision?

3

Well, I’m myopic (short-sighted) and have been wearing glasses since I was about 4 years old. Reading things is not a problem: I just hold things a few inches from my nose and can read just fine. And walking around isn’t a problem either: things are blurry, but I see well enough not to walk into anything. The one thing that I really need glasses for is to drive a car.

But things will be different if you are far-sighted.

4

I can’t see beyond a few inches from my face without my contacts. I’ve been this way since about age 10 or so (got glasses at age 8).

I wear my contacts just about every waking hour. But I do take them out overnight, and I occasionally take a shower without them. Showering is easy; you don’t really need your eyes to shower.

Where things get dicey are:

  • if I want to see what time it is in the middle of the night, I either have to find my glasses on the nightstand, or pick up the clock and put it really close to my face so I can read it. I usually opt for the clock, since finding that is easier than finding my glasses. The fuzzy glow guides me.

  • Getting woken up suddenly and needing to see. Like you hear a bump in the night that you need to investigate, or the phone rings. That’s always a hassle.

  • And the worst: losing your glasses. Usually my glasses live on my nightstand, where I can put them on before bed and in the morning. Occasionally, though, I’ll move them, and forget I moved them until after I take my contacts out. Finding something small and more or less transparent without my contacts in is pretty much impossible. I usually flail about for a bit, using my hands to search in likely areas. If that doesn’t work, I call for Mr. Athena to come help me or I put my contacts back in. Not fun.

I used to occasionally worry about what would happen if the Apocalypse came and my glasses got broken and I ran out of contacts. Now that my pancreas went kaput, I no longer have that worry, since I’ll be dead from lack of insulin long before I die from being blind. Score!

5

I’ll bite. I have a correction of about -12 diopters, and I can see clearly for about an inch in front of me. This is great for extremely close-up work, but stinks for most applications. I can see fuzzy blobs, though, so while I can’t drive without my glasses, I can walk through a room without too much trouble unless there are Legos on the floor or something.

In the shower everything is just fuzzy. For this reason, I was a really bad roommate in college–if the shower was getting mildew I never noticed. But you don’t need to see clearly in order to figure out where the shampoo is, though it does make shaving a bit of an adventure.

I can get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom without glasses, but that’s about it. My glasses always live in the same spot at night, so I know where they are. If they fall down–say, under the bed–I’m pretty lost. If I can’t find them by batting around with my hands, I have to call my husband for help.

When I was about 16, I was spending the summer in Europe, and one morning my glasses fell under the bed. I couldn’t find them at all, so I went to the bathroom without them. I was staying in an older apartment in Germany, with a pull-chain toilet and no bathroom sink (you only need one sink after all, and that sink was in the kitchen). Since I couldn’t see, I was sort of guessing–and I broke the pull-chain. At 5am.

It’s kind of a pain in summer, when we go swimming. I can’t really swim and keep an eye on my kids at the same time, so I just sort of stand around in the pool with my glasses on unless there are no kids in there, and then I can swim.

Edit: I also usually opt for grabbing the clock and holding it really close to my face if I want to know what time it is at night. One really amazing thing about wearing those long-lasting contacts, when I could wear them, was that I could wake up and see what time it was.

6

I’ve been wearing glasses since before kindergarten, so reaching for them isn’t even something I think about anymore. I’ve fallen asleep with them on more times than I could possibly count. The worse mornings are those where I accidentally knock them off the nightstand reaching for the alarm. Then it’s a very careful search by feel until I find them, and there’s an old spare pair that lives in the nightstand drawer just in case.

Shower without them, although I tend to shave my legs outside of the shower so I can actually see the hair. Swimming is a pain, I didn’t swim for years when I needed to be responsible for kidlets. I really have no idea what my husband’s O face looks like, although I’m not sure I’m missing much there.

When you need them to function, you just learn to keep track of them carefully.

7

Normally contacts are not a 24 hour a day item, extended wear is fairly recent for the masses - about 1995 or so is when I first remember seeing extended wear.

I knwo where all my furniture is, i can actually roam around my house and my moms house with my eyes closed. When it is light, I see large patches of colors and in the dark I might see patches of black, grey and lighter grey.

I always put my glasses on a night stand within reach, and put them on when I get up.

I don’t need glasses to shower, I can shower with my eyes closed … I don’t know why you thing blur = not able to shower?

8

Prior to a shower or bath I set everything out so I can find it without needing to see where it is.

One reason I don’t like showers is that if I drop something I can’t find it - unless I step/trip over it. Showers don’t feel safe to me, which is why I really, really do prefer baths.

Back when I had cats I arranged things so that the glasses could not be batted by felines.

Contacts are not for me, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into. LASIK is often suggested but I’ve been evaluated and told I’m a very poor surgical risk. So, for me, it’s a matter of learning to cope.

9

There ust aren’t many situations where I do need to be without my glasses or contacts - if they’re off my face I’m either asleep or in a bath or shower. I have to kind of shave my legs blind, but I’m used to it.

Before we got the dog and cat, I would be fine walking to the bathroom without them on, but now I need them on on - I no longer necessarily know everything that’s likely to be in my path.

Having dark-framed glasses with a lighter colour on the inside makes them much easier to find. I still sometimes lose them, but fortunately I have a spare pair that are very useful for these occasions, as well as my contacts.

Have you ever looked into prescription goggles from online stores? I was surprised by how cheap they are these days.

10

Yeah, I try to have my glasses on at all times, else the world is a lot of fuzzy blobs unless it’s under a foot from my face. I have the same middle-of-the-night problems as mentioned above, and hate it when I knock my glasses off my nightstand and have to feel around for where they could have gone. No cats, thank goodness.

I once accidentally put a facial cleanser instead of toothpaste on my toothbrush. Both came in squeeze tubes with twist caps and had vaguely similar patterns on the tubes. Fortunately the cleanser was mostly just glycerin and citrus oil, so it wasn’t that bad to taste.

11

If they wear an orange sweater, they cope by engaging in some wacky hijinx.

12

Usually I manage fine with the ‘familiar blob’ technique of navigation. The cat never batted them about and the kid only touched them to try them on and they made her feel queasy.

The only times I’ve had issues :

Knocking them far enough that I can’t even see the blur of colour, that means I’m either crawling carefully around the floor or demanding the kid finds them for me. This is very rare as they’re on my face from sun-up to bed time.

Having them break at work, I had to get someone to come drive me home.

My boyfriend taking them off and putting them where I couldn’t find them (*not *sexy, *not *funny, *not *done twice!)

I spent a few years as a teen not realising I needed glasses, but I’ve moaned about this before so lets just leave it with catching the right bus was more luck than design. I didn’t know that other people could see any differently and was more worried about the constant headaches than anything else.

13

How do we cope without our glasses or contact lenses? We blunder around, trip over things, and lose stuff.

One of the worst things about swimming was that I couldn’t wear either my glasses or my contacts, so I never got to see the pretty women in bikinis. They were merely attractive blobs to my vision.

I had either never heard of these prescription swim goggles, or they were really expensive at the time. I’ll have to find out more.

14

I’m just guessing based on my own experience, but at a prescription of -12, prescription goggles may not be cheap, and they may not even be available.

I’m in the same boat as dangermom - one eye is -11 and the other is -12. Daily functioning isn’t that hard; you simply learn to ALWAYS put your eyeglasses in the exact same spot at night.

For me, price and availability of corrective lenses have been the biggest hassle. I wear contacts whenever I can (when soft ones first came out they weren’t even available in my prescription, but now it’s no big deal), but of course I need eyeglasses too. They have to be hi-index or they’d be about an inch thick. Okay, “an inch” is exaggeration, but not much. Even the thin hi-index lenses are so thick that the beveled edges have bevels to make them look a little thinner.

Plus, I need bifocals, and prefer the nicer-looking progressive lenses.

Then, there are all the bells and whistles that either you want to be added (shatter-resistance, anti-scratch coating) or are required by the manufacturer/law to add, like UV coating - last time I bought eyeglasses, in Texas, the optometrist said I was REQUIRED to have the UV coating in my prescription, although I’m not clear on whether the requirement was from the manufacturer or the law. I have nothing against UV coating, but it deteriorates in about 2 years, meaning I will have to buy new glasses.

Bottom line: using the cheapest frame available, my last pair of eyeglasses cost me around $900. Let me stress, that was NOT because I was getting fancy designer frames by Dior or some such idiocy - I got the cheapest frame available that fit my face and would hold my thick lenses. No, that was over $800 for the lenses alone.

I would very much like never to buy glasses again, but because of the annoying UV coating issue, I’ll probably have to.

15

I just looked around bit, and while the strongest prescription i saw listed was -10, there were a lot of ‘custom’ options. Changing -12 to -10 would be a big help anyway. I’m only getting UK shopping results; the prices range from £10 to £27 before the customised options. I’m -8 and mine were £12.

16

-12? -10? How are you people not walking into the sides of houses without your glasses/contacts on?

I’m -2 in one eye and somewhere between -2.75 and -3.25 with a .25 astigmatism in the other (having some issues with that eye, haven’t figured them out yet). I’m always worried that for some reason I’m going to have to wear my glasses during the day. Either because of some strange eye exam or that this eye problem I’m having is going to wind up with me not being able to wear contacts anymore. My eyes are so sensitive to light, I always wear sunglasses when I drive. That means driving with out contacts would require prescription sunglasses.

As far as showering, that’s not a big deal. I normally sleep with my lenses in, so I already have them in when I shower, but if I don’t, it’s blurry, but as my ex-wife’s grandfather once said “I know where everything is”.

Sleeping is annoying when I don’t have my lenses in. Especially as others have mentioned if I knock my glasses off the nightstand. That’s always a pain.

The other thing that I’ve found difficult, and I want to know if this happens to anyone else, is reading up close. I, technically, have good vision up close, but because the script for each eye is so far apart, my depth perception is a bit wonky without glasses or contacts. I often find myself closing one eye (either one, doesn’t matter) to look at something up close to get rid of the ‘3D effect’. Also, WRT my script being so far apart, my doc did mention to me that the farther apart the diopters drift (is that the right way to say that) the harder it is to correct. He mentioned that right now, with me being a full diopter apart, I’ll likely never have perfect vision, it’ll always be a little bit off.

17

Um… well I solve the problem by pretty much wearing my glasses constantly from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep at night. Therefore, if I’m awake I’m wearing them. Since I don’t sleepwalk, problem solved!

No, it doesn’t. You can get clip on sunglasses that attach to your prescription glasses. The traditional style has actual clips, but I’ve seen some that are held on by tiny magnets. You can get lenses that change color when exposed to sunlight.

There are also types that fit entirely over your glasses. Many people think these look dorky as heck, but I use them because even with high-index lenses mine are too thick for the clips on clip-ons to go over them.

Well, I’m so near-sighted and astigmatic that without my glasses I just pretty much can’t read - my nose gets in the way of pulling the text closer to my eyeballs.

Sometimes, people say, don’t you get tired of the hassle of glasses? What hassle? With my glasses my vision corrects to 20/20 and the FAA lets me fly airplanes. Without my glasses, I can’t even find the airplane. Is a guy with an artificial leg inconvenienced? Well, yeah, to some degree, but being without prosthesis would be a lot more inconvenient, ya know?

18

I think I’m about -10, which means can’t see without blurriness more than three inches in front of my face. I read with glasses on. When I have a new baby or have to be up a lot at night I sleep with my glasses on, which isn’t very comfortable but helps me to focus immediately when I’m woken up, and also prevents me from sleeping really deeply (good if you have a sick child).

I get panicked and whiny if I can’t find my glasses, or if something happens to them. During the winter I had a bad spate of lenses falling out. The worst was in deep slush, five blocks from home, pushing a stroller with two children in it. I found the lens, but walking home was no fun.

Does anyone else feel sort of in a dream-state without glasses on? Everything’s soft (blurry) focus. Doesn’t feel real.

19

That’s what my dad does, and they work great. I’ve moved to the clip-ons you get for like $6 at the hardware store–they clip to the nosepiece and don’t mind how thick your lenses are. They are incredibly dorky-looking, but at least I can see! My eyes are also very light-sensitive–I suspect the treatment I went through as a kid where my eyes were constantly dilated for about 5 years has some part in that, but who knows. I do have a second pair of prescription sunglasses for when I need to look like a sane person, but the clip-ons are darker and better for driving.

I didn’t know there was such a thing as prescription swim goggles. :eek: I may need to look into that-- a -10 prescription would be practically as good as 20/20!
And Joey P, I pretty much don’t go outside my bedroom without glasses on, so I don’t have to worry about stray houses getting in my way. But I can see without glasses–just not too well.

20

I have really terrible vision, too, but I don’t have cats, so I just reach for my glasses on getting up. I can shower without the specs because it’s not like you need to see all that much. And I know where all the relevant parts are.