This is extremely bad astigmatism and myopia. So bad I don’t think it has ever been properly assessed or corrected in my entire life. They read -7.50 off my last lenses and got an even higher reading than that at first that was “impossible.” I got these glasses at Lenscrafters of all places and they are the only ones who have been able to get me close to 20/20 vision. Any local optician I have ever gone to in my life gave up trying after 45-90 minutes of trying refraction. The amount of money these places extracted from me and my parents for glasses is staggering. I never saw the chalkboard in school, even in the front row!!
I recently turned 31 which meant a trip to the DMV for my license renewal, as you can probably guess I failed the incredibly stupid machine vision test and was told to go to the eye doctor for a waiver to get my license, or surrender it immediately. No way I’m giving up my license before my baby boomer parents have to damn it. Without glasses I’m legally blind 20-400+ in both eyes. So that latest suspect prescription is a week old and useless because the young inexperienced optician gave up on refraction. He let me slide on the DMV waiver because i successfully guessed one letter on the 20/40 line with my current glasses. But he did not fill out the damn form good enough for the garden trolls at the DMV. He missed a question entirely and then stated I was being fitted for glasses which is not true because they didn’t have frames to fit my massive head.
So now I’m trying to get my money back and am being my own advocate from now on. Astigmatism this bad is very rare and most opticians cannot asses it properly. I found this out the hard way over 31 years and now my very freedom to drive is at stake. There is a dearth in information on astigmatism online and I have taken to reading Ophthalmological diagnostic manuals at night before bed. You have to use there language against them so they know that you know what you have and they can’t trick you and give up on you. I’m personally getting a call from the head man himself tomorrow because I called the manager out on the phone in their lingo and I can tell she is scared you-know-what that I will go to the Medical Board, which here in Nevada is actually one of the best in the country. She really kissed my ass when I asked her why the youngin’ optician didn’t even bother to attempt alternate refraction methods or rule out higher order aberrations. Sorry for the long post but I know there are others out there looking for the same information and I will try to help you if you want. Please don’t beat me up too much now…
First - yes, I know I am responding to a thread in which the OP has been banned.
Second - I can’t speak to the astigmatism, but believe me, -8.25 is trivial compared to what some folks deal with. WhyNot’s myopia is much worse than yours; as for me, I was at -18 before surgery in one eye, and my other eye (which I can’t yet have surgery on for boring reasons I won’t go into) is around -18. Vision in that range comes with its own set of accompanying problems, such as retinal degeneration and a high risk of retinal detachment.
Anyway, your astigmatism sounds like a real drag and I’m sorry you have to go through it. You do not, however, get a free pass on driving just because you want to despite not being able to see. Are you going to feel better blaming an incompetent ophthalmologist or DMV “troll” when you hit a kid on a bicycle that you didn’t see?
I have worn glasses since I was 12. The right lens is thicker than the left.
When I was in high school other kids wanted to try my glasses. They would get them within a few inches of their faces–then wince and draw them away. This even included kids who wore glasses themselves!
They always told me not to do this as my Rx is so strong it could cause retinal detachment in normal eyes. I may or may not have let certain kids do it anyways…lol.
This is exactly the kind of attitudes I have dealt with my whole life. Simple myopia of any degree is very easy to correct and very common even in higher levels. Astigmatism as high as mine along with how it is situated differently in each of my eyes make mine an extremely rare case. My Dad has also been diagnosed with Fuch’s Dystrophy, and I have a %50 chance of developing it myself. Lasik surgery of any kind is approved by the FDA for only up to -5.0D of astigmatism and -24D of myopia. Please don’t assume that your eyes are worse than mine, your prescription is a bad one but everyone’s eyes are different.
I can see the little kid or the dog in the roadway. I have had a safe driving record since I first received my license. The vision test has nothing to do with actual driving ability. It is an arbitrary test by a machine that determines if you can read a line of text at a predetermined distance. People do not read while driving and I have never had a problem seeing a stop sign or a red light or the aforementioned kid on a bike. If i felt it wasn’t safe for me to drive I wouldn’t, as I would hope others to do in a similar situation. Just imagine how you would feel living with a handicap and having a machine tell you that you are incapable of doing something that you have been doing fine for years at. Some states even allow for what is called a Demonstrated Ability test which is basically just a driving test where they can determine if you can indeed see and stop at a stop sign. As baby boomers get older you will see this become a real issue. Unless you think your parents will relinquish their independence and license willingly lol…
The bolded…drunks say that. I’m only saying this because I also can’t pass a DMV vision test with my glasses but can with my contact lenses. I do occasionally drive with my glasses but only in the daytime, and not far, even though I do think I can see perfectly well. Now, the thing is, I also drive at night. About 20 years ago I got a new prescription for the first time since I’d gotten my contact lenses, even though I said I could see fine. And for driving at night, it was as if lights had been turned on where there were no lights before. I was astounded at all the stuff I’d been missing. And I didn’t hit anyone either, but it could have been pure luck. (Daytime I didn’t see any difference.)
Just saying, I didn’t realize how impaired I was, until I wasn’t.
Yes, they do. In fact, that’s how I knew that my myopia had gone up again and I needed to see the eye doctor: I couldn’t read highway signs until I was way too close to them to change lanes safely. So long as I was driving a route I knew, I was fine - but I don’t always drive on routes I know.
I had a co-worker decades ago, that would read on road trips while she was driving. She would put the book on the steering wheel, and read most of the way. Scary as shit!
The vision test at DMV has nothing to do with night driving ability either. I would imagine most people would have trouble reading a eye chart in the dark. You may have exposed another flaw in an already flawed process. Also, I don’t think comparing me to a drunk driver is a very good argument either. It goes without saying that if you are drunk you should not drive, period. It sounds to me like you should not have been driving at night at all, but unless the DMV pays people to work nights it would be impossible to determine this.