I know that both my grandparents. Benhard and Julia wore spectacles a good part of their life. As did Grandpa Phillip before his stroke and Grandma Mae. My dad wore glasses as long as I can remember and mother wore them starting in her mid-40s. My brother Greg wore eye glasses before kindergarten and I had them him second-grade on.
We all know that all parents want to do the very best for their children. This includes a trip to the optometrists or for the same price an ophthalmologist to have their eyes checked. What brings us there? How do we know when our child is not seeing well? How do we know when we’re not seeing?
If your daughter reads early it reads well and has a problem with faraway objects how did she know that? She’s not seen them clearly doesn’t know in comparison to others. How does a very bright child see the board when she can’t see faraway? At a play in fourth grade I notice that she was blinking excessively. Being spring I wondered if a was allergies. But a good friend who had an older daughter had done the same thing and needed corrective vision. The school nurse checked her and even with the simplest test, made it known that a trip to the optometrist was in order. When she walked out of the optometrist office with her new glasses, she said “I didn’t know grass came in blades.”
The second child, a son, played baseball and since he could see the seams on the ball we were aware that he is sight for distance was okay. Although his favorite thing was not to read, he did not have a problem. When he was in his late 20s he came to Fargo for a visit and we had his eyes tested. He did not need glasses at that time.
The third child stated he needed to see better. The optometrist at the time strongly suggested that rather than glasses needed to do eye exercises. I trusted a professional to do the right thing by my son. Later, Ryen went to an ophthalmologist who fit him with the glasses he needed previously. There are some eye defects that you cannot correct with exercise. My apologies to my two vision corrected children!
I’ve had several pair of glasses over the years. The first pair I got in second grade. They had a brown front with little hearts in the corner. Although I cannot say for sure why I had glasses, I am apt to think that I got them because I thought I needed them. So the doctors sold me some. He sold me another pair when I was in fourth grade, sixth grade, ninth-grade, and when I was a junior. The ninth-grade pair got lost my coat pocket which I found today I got my new ones! OOPS!
The next pair of glasses was ten years later. I was sewing a lot and my eyes hurt. The optometrist told me I had 2010 vision but fitted me with a correction. They were stored in the sewing machine drawer.
I was in my late 30s and scoring night Little League baseball games. I would watch the play, and looked down to score. My eyes were not refocusing. I learned to watch the entire play and looked down once instead of numerous times because of my vision defect. This is where glasses became a serious need.
The ophthalmologist in Lawrence was the first time that I was told I had an astigmatism. He corrected my vision stating I was close to needing bifocals but not quite there. I wore those big, honking eyeglasses until one spring when the children’s father and I both had our eyes tested.
It was now bifocal time for both of us. I still smile when I think about the two of us going to the grocery store with our new bifocals. One of us looked over the top of our glasses and the other looked under our lenses to read the prices.
I would have a few pair of new glasses over a period of time. I hated bifocals! I was always looking for the spot to see close-up! Then I met an optometrist who suggested blended lenses. He told me to point my nose at what I wanted to look at and I would see clearly with this ‘new’ idea in eyewear. I would change these glasses and frames one more time before I move to Fargo.
After hugs and hellos, the first think Tom did, was adjust my glasses. Nothing had ever stayed up where they belonged. Adjusting my glasses to fit, made the bifocal of the blended lens too high. I had my glasses made to allow them to slide down my nose where always sat.
When I moved here in 1998, Tom wanted me to have my eyes checked. I told him to pick out the frames and if he thought he could get my glasses to stay up on the nose it would be his responsibility. To make this work, he put the nose pads on upside down and fit me with a frame that you could twist, bend, and sleep in! Marvelous decision!
I marched into his office one day about a year ago and said, “I WANT RED FRAMES!” That’s the nice thing about being married to somebody who’s got thousands of frames to pick from! What happened to the first pair that is now 10 years old? The frames are still fine, until recently I use them for my bedroom TV glasses. But the other night, I said to him, “Will you wash these for me, they seem to be covered with something.” I could hear him laughing in the bathroom. He came back and told me they were really, really scratched up. I found another pair in my stash and have retired that first pair.
Check old pictures and watch the changes in frames. If the frames don’t change, it is probably because people reused the frames. Let’s talk about that. Let’s think about it this way: It is all in the care. One can successfully repeat frame use; others hardly last the length of the prescription. Yes, there are a lot of lenses only sales.
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