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> "And unless one’s situation is particularly dire, no one really has to wear glasses anymore; alternatives like contacts and LASIK are there for the choosing"

• iamtew 12y ago
  I had similar issues when trying contacts. I'm slightly nearsighted, -1.25 / -1.50 or something like that, not too crazy. But I have quite strong astigmatism. While wearing contacts I could never keep focus on anything for longer than a few minutes, and it just drove me crazy as well as giving me really bad eye strain. Maybe I had the wrong type of lens, but after two months of trying I just gave up. Considering laser surgery, but it's really expensive and my health insurance won't cover it since it's not considered a necessary surgery for me, since I can just wear glasses.
  • zo1 12y ago
    Last time I looked, laser surgery for astigmatism was still in a quite experimental stage. Perhaps you should research it for yourself, or ask an optometrist.
• everyone 12y ago
  Yeah, that throwaway line pisses me off. I've worn glasses since I was about 8 or so. I'd love to not have to wear them but also face exactly those issues you pointed out.
• icebraining 12y ago
  In fact, if my friends and family are representative of the general population, I'd say that wearing contacts is much more of a fashion choice than glasses. Most contacts wearers I know tell me they're less comfortable, and many keep a pair of glasses to wear in their homes.
  • rlpb 12y ago
    I wear extended wear contact lenses, find them quite comfortable, and prefer them to glasses from a comfort perspective. They're much better than regular dailies or monthlies for comfort. The only downside is the maintenance. Although reduced for extended wear (I only have to mess with them every five days, or they get uncomfortable), I am meticulous about cleanliness to reduce infection risk and so it takes considerable time to get my hands clean and dry and to then thoroughly clean the lenses. This is a pain to do compared to no-maintenance glasses. I do often wear glasses at home, but only because it's convenient to fit my extended wear scheduled breaks (five days on, two days off, replace monthly) around being at home. If I'm already wearing contacts, I don't choose to switch to glasses at home until my schedule requires it. If I could have the same experience I have for the first five days continuously and safely, I would never take the contacts out. But I may be an exception. I used to suffer from recurrent corneal erosion. Perhaps this causes my eyes to be less comfortable than normal when not wearing lenses.
  • Guillaume86 12y ago
    Well here's mine: I wore glasses for 1 year (mostly in class and removed them as soon as I could) then switched to contacts, never looked back (10 years now). Glasses are a big disconfort when you wear them for the first time at 18 years old, always dirty (inadvertently putting my finger on them), can't look on the sides or at the top (especially in class when taking notes), you move your neck a lot more, sun from certain angles makes you blind, etc I agree sometimes they can become uncomfortable given certain conditions and I keep a pair of glasses around but most of the time (must be 99% for me) I find the contacts to be a better solution.
  • Bill_Dimm 12y ago
    Counterpoint: If you are extremely nearsighted, contact lenses can give you much better vision than glasses. If I look at the red digits on an alarm clock from across the room while wearing glasses, and I tilt my head, I can see the numbers shift relative to the position of the alarm clock (think about light going through a prism and the colors separating). I had an old pair of glasses where the numbers would shift completely off of the clock and appear to be floating in the air, but my newer ones aren't that bad (I guess the lens material is better, or the lenses are just smaller so you can't look through them at such an extreme angle).
• Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
  Yeah, when I read something like "but the surgery has a 99% success rate" (I don't remember if that was the actual figure, I think it was lower actually), my mind instantly goes to the other 1%. Glasses are a very mild annoyance, so mild that I'm used to them and don't think about them as an annoyance at all (in fact, sometimes I'm even grateful to have them when I'm cooking and a stray drop of oil flies to the glass). To each their own, but for me personally getting rid of glasses isn't worth the risk of being in that 1%.
  • the_af 12y ago
    Even without looking at the 1% catastrophic failures (forget your fears about losing an eye or going blind, I think you can safely rule them out. And in the case of LASIK, it's truly painless and quick, I can attest to that), the 99% success rate is suspect. Here "success" probably means "defect corrected". But many less than honest eye doctors don't take into consideration subjective matters (is the patient satisfied with the result? is he reporting any discomfort not directly related to the original condition?). So these doctors will report the surgery was a success if it corrected the defect, even when the patient reports other annoyances. This happened to me and to other people I spoke with who had LASIK surgery. Nothing terrible; in my case it was a success. It's just that it's not perfect, I have minor annoyances, but for the statistics it probably counts as a success case.
    • hultner 12y ago
      What annoyances? I've been considering LASIK myself but don't know if it's worth it with -0.5/-0.75 vision impairment. I mean after all, ignoring my impairment and simply not wearing glasses is only a minor annoyance for me. I've sometimes gone years almost never wearing glasses but right now I wear glasses almost every weekday.
  • epsylon 12y ago
    It is significantly less than 1%, and most of the complications can be fixed with additional surgery or simple drug prescriptions. Most of the complications tend to happen with patients for whom pre-op examinations showed that everything wasn't perfect. All in all, catastrophic failures (worst eyesight than before the operation) are very, very rare. IIRC it is something like 0.0005%. Honestly, I think you should at least have a serious talk with your eye doctor about the possibility of having surgery. This doesn't commit you to anything, but at least you'll have given it a serious thought. I did have laser surgery about a year ago, and it definitely changed my life for the better. I was only mildly short sighted, but it proved to be a huge inconvenience to practice sports, but also when breaking glasses, forgetting them, etc... Not to mention the huge boost to my self-esteem: I much prefer my face without glasses. The surgery technique that was used in my case is femtosecond laser, and it is as close as a miracle as modern medicine can get: the surgery lasts basically 15 minutes during which you are put into 2 machines successively. You start seeing again after the effect of the anesthetic dulls off. You get back to your home, have a good night of sleep. The morning after, you have a perfect eyesights. 15 years ago, with less advanced techniques, you had to wait for about a week for the scars to heal. Compare that to the fact that I was back to work only 24h after the surgery.