The following is an account of the many eyeglasses I wore as my eyes grew more nearsighted with age. All measurements were verified since I still have every pair. Looking through many different lenses over the years has helped me learn a lot about myself and the world we live in. Perhaps you can relate to some of these chapters too if you are optically obsessed.
Chapter 1 – Glasses
When we find fault in ourselves, our first reaction is to try to ignore it or blame other people.
"Minus 2.75 is so strong for a first prescription. Is my child watching too much TV?"
The optometrist laughed. "No, it is hereditary."
As a 6 year old, I had no idea what this meant, but the doctor continued explaining to my parent. "Your own nearsighted eyes require -9.75 correction. It looks like you have passed your eyes down to your child."
Even before getting glasses, I had already decided that I did not like the way my face looked. I detested seeing my own face in the mirror. I avoided looking at my own image like the plague, looking down to the floor in places where I know there will be a dreaded reflection. I didn't even like brushing my teeth because it required standing in front of a mirror. When my 1st grade school pictures came in and I compared them to the ones from kindergarten, I almost threw up. No one would say that I have a deformity, but when I looked at my own face I saw nothing but ugly features.
Getting spectacles was not a big deal to me. Peers at school didn't make a big deal about my glasses, and I was already used to thinking as little as possible about things on my face. While most people remove their specs when showering or to pull a sweater over their head, I kept my glasses planted on my nose. I would even avoid taking them off to clean the lenses. The blur from pulling them off for even a few seconds was too much of a reminder that I wore glasses. Up to this day I exercise the technique of just sliding the lens cloth behind my lenses to clean them while they are still on my face.
After the next two eye exams the 49/18 frames saw lenses of increasing power up to -4.75. The plastic frames do a great job of hiding lens thickness, which climbed to 5.5mm. I rarely thought about my glasses, settling into a routine of putting them on my face as soon as I woke up and never seeing them again for most of the day.
Chapter 2 – Contacts
Disruptions force us to see the forest for the trees.
"I read somewhere that contacts will stop the increase of nearsightedness."
My parent's reason for fitting me with contacts lacked solid evidence, but with their persistence, I was switched to wearing contacts all day, despite my young age. I was also forced to look my face again. At least twice a day, I was forced to sit down in front of the mirror to insert and remove lenses from my eyes, comparing the way I looked with glasses, and without. Which one is better, one, or two? Two, or one? While many people prefer their natural look without spectacles, it took getting contacts to see that I already had the solution to my self-image problem sitting on my nose. The defect with my face is that my eyes are naked, and glasses are actually the solution.
Chapter 3 - Shades
Everyone else can see my problem.
“You look funny without your glasses.”
Most children have problems with getting teased when they get glasses. I got teased when I got contacts. But I was expected to wear the expensive contacts every day to stop myopic progression. Every morning I suffered through sitting down in front of a mirror, setting aside my glasses, poking lenses into my eyes, and walking out into the world exposing my original face again.
I had to quickly find a workaround, and acquired a pair of sunglasses to hide behind. I suppose the seed for the idea of wearing glasses over contacts was planted at 9 years old. I wore those shades every minute I was outside, and if I could have it my way I would have worn them all day indoors too.
Chapter 4 – Thick Lenses
We can’t stop nature.
“You should choose a metal frame with nose pieces so the bottom part of your glasses don’t cut into your cheeks,” the optometrist suggested.
It does not surprise parents when children grow up and out of their clothes. Children who wear spectacles also grow out of kids’ frames, and my eyes continued to grow into stronger lenses as well. It was good timing, because plastic frames had gone out of style and I got into a pair of 51/19 metal frames. I started a new school, and new activities created legitimate reasons to let the contacts rest every other day and wear my new glasses. I was also growing to take control of my image, and the contacts were not effective in stopping myopic progression anyway.
One advanced class offered a great environment for competition. There were only five students, and I was one of the elite three who wore thick, strong lenses that stuck out the back of our metal wire frames. I think we had fairly similar prescriptions, but I spent most of that year examining different details that made our three glasses different. A fourth student wore weak minus lenses, and I had pity on the lone fifth student who had no vision correction.
One of the elite classmate’s glasses constantly slid down the nose. At times, every five seconds the back of the hand or index finger would bump the bottom of the frame, popping the glasses back up the nose a little. As I watched, in my imagination those lenses got thicker and heavier every time they slipped. Then I tried the bump technique myself, and would let gravity pull my own glasses down my nose and dream of my lenses getting thicker and heavier.
My lenses were the only ones in the class that came back from the lab with polished edges. I don’t know about the other high myopes, but random kids started commenting to me about how thick my glasses were. Perhaps the shiny lens edges drew notice to the 7mm of thickness. I loved the attention. When I was not wearing glasses, I had no memorable physical features and just blended into a vast sea of regular-looking kids.
Chapter 5 – Flatter Base Curve
The world can be a very lonely place.
As I entered teenage years, I started developing a more distinct image, wearing certain accessories and only clothing of certain colours. Elements of this image were against the grain, but of significance is the desire to wear glasses full-time at an age where kids were all switching to contacts. My strong beliefs also started to become a top issue in dating. My significant other at the time was not similarly disposed, and asked me to wear contacts instead of glasses. I ended the relationship.
My parents were slow to catch on to my changes in style. But it got to the point where no amount of squinting or repositioning my 3-year-old -6 diopter glasses was sufficient to see properly through them. It was only when I was screened at school to have worse than 20/100 vision wearing these glasses that we finally went in for an eye exam. Since it was obvious I needed much stronger glasses after three years of growing, I eagerly anticipated getting a new pair of thicker and stronger glasses to wear full-time, with contacts now being only for “backup”. The lab technician processed the lenses, installed them, and then came out to us with some bad news.
"With these strong lenses, the edges stick out of the back of the frame and the arms will not fold. But I can fix it."
I only got a glimpse of the glasses before he started hacking at the lens edges. The hinges of the arms fold almost flush with these metal frames, preventing them from fully folding with any amount of lens thickness. And there wasn't really even that much thickness since they are polycarbonate aspheric lenses with flatter curves.
"I will roll the edges," the technician declared, and he went back to work. First he stripped the thickest part of the lens that protrudes out the back of the frame with a small step bevel. Then he ran a slight roll on the edge. After taking out a millimeter here, and a millimeter there, the lenses were only 5.5 mm thick and the arms were finally able to collapse into an acute enough angle to be bent into the glasses case. I should have stopped him in the beginning and said something like, "Don't worry about this, I will never be folding the arms of these glasses. They will always be on my face." This is the beginning of many lessons to learn in the fight to get the glasses that I want, not the glasses the rest of the world wants.
These lenses also taught me about base curves. The surfaces of glasses lenses reflect light from all sources just like any pane of glass. Most spectacles have convex front base curves that dissipate reflections, like the +4 curve on my last pair of -6 lenses. Stronger minus lenses have flatter front base curves to reduce the overall thickness of the lens. The base curve of the new -8 lenses are only +1, and reflect light a lot more like a mirror. I love this distinctive look, since it is more obvious that there are real lenses in front of my eyes, not the almost invisible demo lenses that are in frames before you buy them.
Chapter 6 – CR-39
Studying may build knowledge, but true insight is learned through experience.
I started reading about glasses lenses, and discovered that the trade name of the thicker plastic material used before thin polycarbonate lenses became popular is CR-39. The first thing I did after I got my driver's license was make an appointment for an eye exam to see if my prescription numbers have increased to get stronger glasses. When the lenses were ordered, I made sure to request the CR-39 material. This optometrist did not have a lab, so I had to wait a few days and go back to pick up the job when it was done.
As the technician retrieved my glasses, she declared, "We beveled the edges of the lenses so they would look better."
These lenses looked like they were hacked at with a chisel compared to the minute shaping in the previous chapter. Much to my disappointment, most of the edge thickness was gone. But the angled, polished edges offered a different experience. The lenses ran multiple rings of internal reflections that encircled my eyes. On a sunny day, the dancing rays inside the lens were intense and provided constant awareness of the multi-faceted lenses that I wore.
The experience of wearing glasses was becoming as much about the feeling on my face as the image in the mirror. I have become addicted to the way glasses enhance my visual field with reflections, chromic aberration, and minimization. Chapter 5's 48/18 wire frames with polycarbonate lenses were almost weightless, and would even flutter in the wind when I rolled the window down in the car. The new, heavier 49/19 frames with CR-39 lenses sank snuggly into my ears and nose, and became a multi-sensory experience.
Chapter 7 - The Author
The Author gave me perfectly what I needed to reach the goal.
I started dating another high myope who recognized my fetish and drew me in by getting and wearing thick glasses with CR-39 lenses. It was becoming clear to me that there is something about thick glasses that draws me in. I found an online bulletin board devoted to glasses fetish, discovering I wasn't the only one searching. Most fascinating were the writings of an Author who described the perfect life that I was looking for. His stories often have a recurring plot where a child would grow up and into progressively stronger minus lenses, meet a soul mate with strong glasses, fall in love, and live happily ever after.
I was about to graduate from high school, and by now had what most would consider high myopia. However, the progression has slowed significantly, and I was still far short of getting to wear the strongest and thickest glasses described in the Author's stories. Soon I would stop growing altogether. I was starting to despair, wondering what I could do to maximize progression in the limited time I had left.
The Author saw my plight and agreed to meet me and give me encouragement. First, he let me have two pairs of old glasses from his collection. The more interesting pair had 16mm thick lenses, the thickest I have ever seen, and amazingly were only -11 power. The lenses have a completely plano base curve and look like bricks in the rectangular 54/18 frame. I could put them on and actually see fairly well through them! These glasses clearly showed me that even if I do not progress much further in myopia, the dream of wearing the thickest glasses in the world is still achievable.
The second piece of key advice the Author gave me pertained to my significant other. He emphasized that indulging the glasses fetish can't be the only thing in our relationship. A true soul mate has to be compatible in every way, and we were having issues. I ended the relationship before I graduated, with many new things to ponder.
If life is easy, I would just wear the dream glasses the Author had given me and this story is over. However, these glasses are way too extraordinary for daily wear. It isn't that they are too strong, too thick, or too heavy, because for me there is no such thing. The Author's glasses are a precious relic from the past, and I was convinced that there is not a single optician left that knows how to or dares make a pair of lenses this thick. Wearing such a relic every day is a faux pas and too risky. It would be like wearing ancient jewelry from a museum out in public every day. I cannot use the dream glasses the Author gave me as daily glasses, and have never worn them outside my room. Instead, they serve as an important guide by which I measure how close I am to achieving the goal of wearing the most perfect pair of thick glasses.
Chapter 8 – Rimless
Transparency is a noble trait.
The Author's glasses frames are of a semi-rimless style. The metal frame only encircles the top half of the lens. A transparent wire wraps around the groove in the bottom half of the lens, exposing the full thickness of the lenses without any frame to hide it.
Inspired by the Author, I selected a semi-rimless frame for my next pair of glasses. I requested CR-39 lenses and no bevel. It was a great way to celebrate hitting -10. The base curve came back almost flat, 0.5 diopters. I enjoyed how the frame style exposed all 10mm of lens thickness. They fall short of the Author's glasses in strength and thickness due to the smaller 49/19 frames and aspheric lens design, but it was a huge step in the right direction. I loved the rimless glasses and wore them until they fell apart. It became clear that semi-rimless frames are a key attribute of the perfect pair of thick glasses.
Chapter 9 – Biconcave
When you run out of ideas, exchange with others.
While I was still trying to figure out the next step, another member of the online glasses bulletin board introduced me to the world of biconcave lenses. I didn't think opticians started using minus base curves until very high prescriptions, but apparently -14 was enough to drive one into a biconcave shape. We did a temporary glasses swap through the mail so I can experience it, figuring I still had enough accommodative ability to use them.
I loved the power of the -14 lenses, and how the dished in front base curve acted almost like satellite dishes in front of your eyes. The bowls collect light from all sources around you and reflect them back upside down. I wore the biconcave glasses around a bit in public and in front of friends. Adult society is usually more polite than junior high school, and it had been years since I received any comments on my glasses, whether good or bad. I missed the attention, and these borrowed glasses brought it back. I got all sorts of comments, ranging from compliments on the stylish rectangular frames to observations that they looked really thick.
Chapter 10 – Glasses Over Contacts
Simulations are key to understanding reality.
Before returning the biconcave glasses, I had to get a pair of my own. However, I had only been getting small increases in my prescription, and no optician would use a biconcave lens to fill a -10.5. The only way to do this was GOC. Rather than settling for -14, I figured that if I was going to go through the trouble, I might as well go solidly into the land of biconcave lenses. With help from the Author, I went to Walmart Optical and picked out a semi-rimless frame for my -16.25 lenses. They came back 15mm thick, with the front curve dished in -4.25, and a slight 1mm bevel in the back.
GOC's simulation of high myopia reveals some common misconceptions. Most people think that those who wear thick glasses have trouble seeing clearly. The fact is, my corrected vision wearing glasses has always been 20/20, even wearing GOC. Myopia is just a condition where the natural lens has too much power. As long as you have the proper combination of natural and worn lenses to get the correct focus for what you are looking at, otherwise healthy eyes have the same density of receptors to see as detailed images as anyone else. To prove this misconception, I started engaging in sports, hobbies, and activities that require very good vision, wearing my thick glasses. Just like everyone else, I excelled at these with practice, and over time even won competitions.
GOC also gave me appreciation for how precise things have to be when you are working with strong lenses. It may take several tries to translate the 20/20 vision that you were refracted with in front of a phoropter into a pair of glasses. Eye care "professionals" who diminish complaints from high myopes when their glasses aren't made to specification are being ignorant. Perhaps these professionals should simulate the lenses they dispense through GOC as well.
The -16 glasses from Walmart were the first of a few glasses filled by various opticians as I worked through small things that made noticeable differences in vision. I liked that when I looked to the left and to the right, the edge of my vision is thickly framed with 15mm of lens. Usually, the area covered at the edge of the visual field is not lost, but just compressed into the minimized image when looking through a minus lens, especially with thin metal frames. However, the 49/20 frames do not cover very much peripheral vision. What area the small frames do cover is distorted on the edges, due to a significant -4.25 base curve that is very backwards from pivot arc of the eye when you look left and right.
For the second pair of GOC glasses, I went with a different optician and bigger 53/17 frame. They came back with a -4.25 base curve as well, but only 14.5mm thick since the lab beveled in the edges 3mm. The deep bevel ruined any gains in peripheral vision from going with a bigger frame. The bevel also makes the lenses look somewhat like myodiscs.
Online opticians are even worse. One pair of 47/17 frames came back with almost half of the lens power in the base curve, -8, with bevels everywhere to grind the lenses down to 11mm. The power rings were interesting, but the optics awful. It is almost as if they all use the same cheap lab that does not have equipment to handle any lens blanks thicker than 11mm. Regardless of the prescription, they never come back thicker than 11mm. Everything from my natural -10.75 to -19 myodiscs with a -3 base curve always come almost exactly 11mm thick. Do lens blanks like the one used in the Author's 16mm thick glasses even exist?
Chapter 11 – Glasses-mates
Having a person to share the adventure with is as fun as the adventure itself.
I was failing to get to the perfect glasses, even with GOC. Other parts of the Author's stores also proved to be elusive. I dreamed of meeting a soul mate who also wears strong lenses, get married, and live happily ever after. It was a lofty dream, since most high myopes feel that they have better vision with contacts compared to glasses that I now know are often poorly made. Even in college, you can go through an entire day looking at hundreds of people and never see a pair of thick glasses.
But one day, it happened. I met a high myope who wore glasses full time because they were more comfortable and presented better vision. We had great discussions commiserating over exclusive topics like hi-index lenses and growing up competing with siblings over getting the highest glasses prescription. We are compatible in every way, and got married. Our -10 prescriptions were even almost identical, which blew our optometrist's mind. Over the course of marriage, my soul-mate abandoned hi-index lenses because of the way they look, and even ditched polycarbonate lenses because of poor optics. I love walking around together, both of us wearing thick low-index lenses.
With a perfect glasses-mate to be with all the time, I abandoned GOC, which was producing mixed results anyway. I continued trying to crack the 11mm barrier by getting larger frames. I finally struck gold with my local optometrist, when a pair of rectangular 54/19 frames came back with 13mm thick lenses. Most interesting was the shape of the base curve, which was not 0.5 like everything else I had been getting. My slight cylinder correction was ground into the flat front of the lens, so the reflections off of it danced more like a fun house mirror. I didn't receive comments about my glasses when they were 11mm thick, but at 13mm marvels from other people were back.
Chapter 12 – Out of the Machine
Machines never lie, but they never tell the whole truth.
The dream of wearing thicker glasses still bugged me, but I was fairly content, happily married to another high myope and wearing thick 13mm lenses. I put them on as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, and they stayed on until I went to bed. I even quit having annual eye exams, as I had not budged past -10.75 in a long time. Besides, outside of a pregnancy or retinal detachment, I had never heard of a 32 year old developing significant gains in myopia. We had let three years go by before finally getting around to scheduling an examination. In the last three years, I had detected no changes in my ability to focus in the distance. But in the days leading up to the exam, focusing at infinity started to drift significantly. On the drive to the optometrist, I was wondering if perhaps I have accumulated another couple diopters of myopia over the years.
In the office, I peeked at the printout from the autorefractor and it read -12.5 and -11.75. That is spot on with my estimation. I had brought a comfortable pair of semi-rimless 53/19 frames to get re-lensed in trivex material, and was already looking forward to thicker lenses.
When my eyes were dilated for a final refraction through the phoropter, I started getting concerned. As my eyes numbed, everything in the room drifted out of focus, even with my -10.75 glasses on. Since dilations eliminate all accommodative powers of the ciliary muscle, I feared that this meant I was going to end up with a lower prescription than what I was currently wearing. After ordering lenses, I asked for a written prescription. I was handed a real, signed prescription of -16.25. I have no complaints, but my soul mate and I scratched our heads for a while trying to figure out how a 32 year old becomes 5.5 diopters more myopic in such a short amount of time. I am certainly not pregnant, but thinking about hormone changes produced one theory.
I had an accident during one of my extreme activities earlier in the year. I was wearing a helmet, and cable temples are the best way to go for serious glasses wearers. The fall was hard enough to land me in the trauma center, but my glasses stayed on my face the whole time. The recovery process occurred over an extended period of time. Around the same time I made my optometrist appointment, I underwent a significant surgical procedure to reconstruct bone lost from an accident. At first glance, this should have nothing to do with my eyes, but a membrane slowly releasing growth hormone was implanted into my skull. Perhaps the hormones are changing my adult eyes?
I didn't have to wait for the new glasses to validate the change. I had -16 glasses from back when I was doing GOC. Going from -10.75 to -16 cold turkey was a huge change, and I had to slide the stronger glasses down my nose for very close work like using the computer. Switching back and forth between glasses was the only option until the new ones came in. The GOC glasses also had my astigmatism correction from over 10 years ago, which has drifted a bit over the years, so vision was never totally satisfactory.
The new -16.25 glasses came back only 13mm thick, so I didn't gain any raw thickness. In spite of the strength, the base curve is still 1.5 diopters convex. As a result, the back curve has to be a steep bowl-like -17.75 curve, which spans a reasonable range despite the aspheric design. Finally, the extreme 3mm bevel gives the whole design very distinctive myodisc-like look. When I put them on, I finally recovered all the detail in distance vision I had recently lost. They were still too strong for close work, so whatever was revealed during the dilation hadn't full settled yet.
I ordered CR-39 lenses in a backup pair of 52/18 frames, hoping to get more thickness with the lowest index material. They came back only 11mm, with the same 3mm bevel and an extremely aspheric design. The variation was so extreme that the lenses were unwearable. I protested, and the optician barked "that is the way they come out of the machine". What happened to the great lenses from 3 years ago? Perhaps the optometrist switched to an inferior lab.
Chapter 13 – Nothing is Impossible
Know your destiny, and enjoy the unknown journey there.
Now I am a real -16.25 myope faced with the real challenge of trying to get a high power lens made correctly. It has been 10 years since I have done GOC, but perhaps I can apply what I learned. After reflecting on past successes and failures, I started by taking the paper prescription in to Walmart Optical. The first submission for lenses was a 53/19 rimless frame. When I picked them up, the technician provided a disclaimer before showing me the glasses.
"Because you chose regular plastic lenses, they are very thick."
"Very thick" may mean only 11mm to the labs that apparently don't have the machines to handle anything thicker. A Walmart, we are in agreement. My glasses came back 16.5mm thick, with a slight -2 base curve on the front. The lens design is absolutely perfect. The slight base curve presents very little distortion, and the back curve is a true 14.25 all the way to the edge.
These lenses present a whole world of clearer vision than the Trivex bowls. Even close vision works the way it should. I wore the glasses to a sporting event that weekend. Despite rain and bad weather spitting drops all over my glasses, I did lenses than ever and won a trophy.
Nothing is impossible. With some patience, the journey through all these lenses finally led to the intended destination, and I am now running around every day wearing just about the thickest glasses in the world.
Chapter 14 – The End
Once we get to the end, we can look go back through the story and see it made whole and perfect.
I went back to give Walmart compliments, and continued to bring frames in to them for lenses. Recently a pair of 55/15 frames came back with 17mm thick myodisc lenses on a -3 base curve. The technicians probably talk about my frequent visits, and they all know me as "the -16".
One asked, "If you don't mind me asking, why so many glasses?"
I replied, "I've acquired so many over the years, but the prescriptions are out of date and I would like to wear many of them again. They don't work unless I bring them to you for your perfect lenses."
I suppose my response reflects why I have sat down to document my adventure through lenses. Once we get to the end, we can look go back through the story and see it made whole and perfect.
- 30calcat -
Statistics: Posted by 30calcat — Sun Jan 17, 2016 3:35 am