I had my first surgery when I was six months old. Don’t worry, I had no horrible accident or anything, I was just born with strabismus, which means I have crossed eyes. This was corrected quickly when I was a baby but my vision has never been perfect and my right eye is still a little lazy so I’ve always had to use glasses.
Growing up with glasses means that I really don’t know how many different eye doctors I’ve had in my life, but every time I go to a new one and they’re going to do they first eye test, they always warn me what they different steps of the test are, even though its always the same thing: They shine a bright light at each of my eyes and then they throw air in my eye, I have to look through a lens where I see an air-balloon. Why is it an air-balloon? Anyway, I have to look at letters and read them, then they make them bigger, then smaller, it’s always the same thing. I’ve gotten used to it because I always leave with the perfect prescription for glasses and contacts and everything looks better with my new prescription.
Last Saturday was a little different. I went to a new eye doctor and after she did the test, she gave me new contact lenses to try on. They each had a different prescription, like they always do, but I still couldn’t see that well on the right eye. So the doctor found another lens with a different prescription for me to try on, but this one needed instructions because it was a different kind of contact lens. This lens has lines in it that she told me always have to to be horizontal and in the bottom part of the lens because this will… I don’t really remember what the reason was for those special lenses, but I did see better at the moment.
I was given those lenses for a week and I have to go back next Saturday to check if they work. I can’t wait for it to be Saturday because they don’t work. They work for a little while when I first put them on, but after a while I’m just struggling to see correctly on both eyes. I realized today that they make me do exactly what the doctors have told me my whole life I can’t do, I’m all the effort on my left eye to see well, while my right eye is just being lazy and not doing anything.
These last few days I thought I just had to get used to it but it’s not me, it’s the lenses; these lenses are for people with astigmatism or blurred vision. I don’t have blurred vision, I have a lazy eye. In 28 years no doctor has given me anything for blurry vision, why now? I didn’t get blurry vision after the accident and my vision didn’t even get worse because of it; why would I have blurry vision now?
I’m not happy that I waited until today, after my head started hurting, to look for information about the lenses she gave me. Everything would have been fine if she gave me the regular lenses with my actual prescription but they were just trial lenses, I haven’t bought anything yet. I am kind of in a bad mood now because my head hurts because of those lenses but I think I still have my old ones around here somewhere so I can use them until Saturday.
Unstoppable María 