Do Men Make Passes at Women Who Wear Glasses?

When I was 15 years old, I developed a love/hate relationship with my glasses. I loved being able to see, but hated how I looked in glasses.

Go back through your old yearbooks and fashion magazines to the early 80's and check out those jumbo, owl-eye glasses. Yuck. My glasses, which I thought were the best looking I could find, had maroon plastic frames. Remember Sally Jesse Raphael and her signature jumbo red frames?

Even thinking they were tolerable, I hated my glasses. I suffered the personal degradation until I was nearly 18 years old. My mother, thankfully, worked at an optometrist's office and got a good price on contacts. I was in like Flynn.

Contacts were wonderful. I could see and didn't have to have hideous glasses sitting on my face, however, they came with their own problems. They had to be cleaned. These were the kind that had to be removed every night, washed and allowed to soak in the sterilizing wash. Well, I quickly fell into the bad habit of not doing what I was supposed to do. I'd wear my lenses for days before taking them out for a sterilizing bath. Then, I committed the biggest NO NO of contacts wearing rules. I wore them to Chem Lab. Yep. Wouldn't you know we would be working with 6 molar hydrochloric acid that day. Can you say corneal acid burns? As a result, I returned to wearing glasses (granted I had progressed to more stylish wire frames by then) for two weeks while my eyes healed. At least I didn't blind myself.

Technology improved over the years and lenses could now be safely worn for longer periods of time. Not long after Extended Wear lenses, I was introduced to the newest sensation in contacts. I embraced Disposable lenses with glee. I did not, however, embrace the cost of maintaining disposable lenses. By this time, I was a poor, poor college grad living in a mouse infested apartment with no furniture. I could barely make my rent even with having three jobs. Dropping a couple hundred bucks on a month's worth of disposable lenses was not in my thrifty spender manual. So, the pair of lenses that should have been tossed into the garbage after a week, two weeks at the maximum, lasted me nearly three months. But hey, I did take them out once a week to clean them.

Eventually, I landed a good job and could not only afford my rent, I could also afford groceries, a car payment, an insurance payment, a phone, cable television AND contacts. Life was good.

I should have left well enough alone. But noooooooo. Not me. I have to keep on picking and picking.

Seduced by the dark side, I inquired into Lasik Eye Surgery. I had heard all the wonderful "It's amazing!" stories. My id whispered "do it. do it. do it. do it." "Luke, I am your father. Come join me. It is your... destiny."

I admit, I jumped on that band wagon with a flourish. I was looking forward to being able to see anytime of the day or night, whether or not I had contacts in. No more eye drops, no more cleaners, no more month purchases of new lenses, no more eye checkups and no more glasses. I would save lots of money in the long run. This was going to be GREAT.

NOT!

If you are considering eye surgery, keep on considering it. I am the poster child for DO NOT DO IT! LASIK IS BAD.

I listened to folks tell me the procedure is painless. Let me tell you...THEY LIE. The procedure does hurt in spite of the eye numbing drops.

Imagine a science fiction film where the hero, abducted by aliens, is strapped to a surgical table. The hideous looking probe descends from above. Our hero's eye has been forced open by some sort of steel contraption and is helpless against the slowly advancing probe. The probe gives birth to a two foot needle as it inches closer and closer to the hero's eye. A droplet of sweet dribbles down the hero's cheek. His mind screams in terror.

That's what it's like.

I was all strapped in, ready to go, my eye securely held open by some sort of forceps device. The doctor tells me to look up. A tiny metal claw slowly advances toward my eye. All I want to do is close my eye and turn my head away. A metal claw is going to touch my eyeball for goodness sake. Wait! Wait! Wait! Is it too late to reconsider?

Then the claw sets down right smack on top of my cornea and retracts; it's job complete. It has marked my cornea with pie wedge markings allowing for easier to lining up of the flap after the laser cuts chunks out of my cornea.

A ring descends onto my eyeball and the doctor says "You might feel some pressure." Yeah, RIGHT. Some pressure. A more accurate warning would have been, "Okay, you might feel as if your eyeball is being crushed and will burst at any moment. The intense pressure you experience will momentarily cause your vision to cease to function. That's right, you are going to go completely blind."

The next thing the doctor says is "Now your are going to hear a buzzing sound. That's the blade cutting the flap." He should have said. "Now that you are completely panicked about being blind, let me fire up this chainsaw and stick it in your eye."

Once the flap is cut, the torturous ring o' incredible pressure is removed. The next eye assault device is a stainless steel hook. "When the flap is pulled back, your vision will go blurry and you'll see splashes of colored light." This should be okay, except that my vision was already blurry. I can, however, clearly see the hook poking my eyeball. I would have really liked to have closed my eyes so I wouldn't have to see the flap of epithelial cells slide across my eyeball. Sure enough, there was a crazy kaleidoscope of colors swirling and twirling around. That's when I'm told to look into the little red light. What little red light? I don't see any red light. I see splashes of purples and blues churning around bursts of white and yellow sparkles. There is no little red light.

"Keep your eye still. Focus on the little red light. You will now hear the laser." THERE IS NO LITTLE RED LIGHT! Wait, wait, wait. Is it too late to reconsider?

"Okay, that's all done. Now for the next eye."

When it was all said and done and I was bandaged and given really ugly sunglasses, I was sent on my way. I was told I would see a noticeable difference by the next morning. Again, they lie.

My vision was just as blurry the next morning. I had just spent $3000 to see and I couldn't. I should have bought bigger boobs instead.

Eventually, my eyes adjusted, well one eye adjusted. The other (the left) never did adjust. Apparently, some alterations were needed. So, back to the laser. Luckily, my flap hadn't affixed itself completely so there was no need for the torturous ring o' incredible pressure. More looking into the nonexistent little red light and presto!

I still can't see. Perhaps there is a slight wrinkle in the flap itself. Perhaps a tiny air bubble.

Perhaps I find a different doctor.

The next doctor did his best to fix the problem. I even ended up with six teeny tiny stitches in my eye to secure the flap in place. After all of that, I still can't see properly out of that eye. But now, my vision isn't correctable with contacts or glasses. I see a ghost image and there's nothing that can be done about it. Oh, yeah, and I have serious halo effect at night, a loss of depth perception especially at night and I still have to use eye drops because of the chronic dryness. I used to be able to shoot a mean game of pool, but not anymore.

It's been three years since the fiasco and my right eye, my good eye is now going bad. Working in front of a computer has forced my eyes to work harder than they should. My good eye is now farsighted and my left eye is still bad; 20/300 bad. The good news, according to my most recent eye exam (a week ago) is that the ghost is correctable. I just have to have special lenses made to compensate for the significant warping on my cornea. The combined correction between my warped nearsighted left eye and my farsighted right eye is to such a degree that the effect would make me nauseous. It's been suggested to correct one or the other at this time and wait a while before correcting the other.

I'm still going to end up wearing glasses. I should have stayed with them in the first place and spent the three grand on something else, like bigger boobs. At least those would serve a function in the dark.