So, when it came to the genetic lottery category eyesight, I did not win. This is my prescription:
Left eye: -1,00
Right eye: -4,00
I also have astigmatism only in my right eye. Getting contact lenses and glasses has always been a pain, but I digress.
I have an office job that involves staring at a computer for most of the day. When getting my glasses, I asked if it made sense to wear them when working, but the optometrist said not to do that since I’m near-sighted anyways. The issue with that is that my right eye is so bad, that even if I’m sitting half a metre away from the screen, I cannot see clearly out of my right eye. So I’m basically only using my left eye to see when I’m working. I then asked if it was possible to get -3,00 contact lenses to wear in only my right eye, so that my eyes were at least the same and so that the workload on my eyes would be evenly divided. He chuckled and seemed confused, and then when he saw that I was being serious, he said that that’s not possible. He didn’t explain why.
I’m obviously not an expert (hence why I managed to make the optometrist laugh with my silly question), so please explain like I’m 5: why is this not possible? Why can’t I wear a -3,00 contact lens in my right eye to have it be the same as my left eye? Why can’t we custom correct vision?
In: 5
as someone who definitely isnt an expert and is about to take a nap, i cant think of any technical reason why you ***couldnt*** wear just one lens, but i imagine it could screw with your depth perception enough that you might not want to do it
I don’t understand what would be the harm in wearing your glasses while working. AFAIK there is no downside to that.
~~Your near-sightedness probably isn’t the reason you can’t see your screen clearly out of your right eye, as with a strength of -4 you should be able to see clearly much further than that. My guess is the problem is the astigmatism.~~ Edit: seems I got some wrong info here. See u/disruptor483_2’s comment. The -4 alone is probably enough not to see your screen well.
I don’t think (but I could be wrong) that there’s any real reason why you couldn’t get a -3 contact lens in one eye. It’s more a question of whether it makes sense, both for your optometrist to recommend it as a practice and also e.g. for insurance to reimburse it. The main reason being that, if you’re going to invest in corrective lenses, why not just correct your eyesight as much as possible? Why would you deliberately stop short of that?
~~In your case, since I think the real problem is the astigmatism, just getting the -3 correction wouldn’t “evenly divide the workload” anyway. It would have to be a -3 combined with the astigmatism correction.~~ ~~But again,~~ I think it makes more sense just to get the full prescription that you need in both eyes and wear that.
Im not visually impaired but as I understand it these sorts of glasses do exist? Pretty sure you can just get a specific-use setup made
I don’t understand. I wear different strength contacts because my eyes have different prescriptions. This is very standard. One eye is 9 and the other is 10 (yep, my eyes are terrible!) I guess you could wear just one 3 but it would make more sense to actually fully correct your vision with one 1 and one 4.
I don’t know what kind of weird optometrist you go to, -1 and -4 is definately enough that you should be wearing glasses all the time.
What would be the point of just wearing one contact?
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That’s weird.
I’ve had prelix surgery to correct -9 prescriptions with astigmatism, but you have to be over 50 to get it.
Astigmatism with contacts is tricky, but you should be able to get both eyes to 20/20 with contacts or glasses. Gas perms give the best vision, then glasses, then soft lenses.
What county do you live in? How old are you?
I am not sure your optometrist is up to date on the current practices. At least for people with perfect eyesight it have become more and more common to get so called computer glasses. These have a strength of around +2 and filters some blue light. They make it easier to focus on computer screens, especially as people start to get older and have struggle focusing all day. These are not as common for people with a prescription already, partly because two pairs of custom glasses is expensive and partly because you can just take off your glasses when using the computer. Before I got the surgery I had a bit weaker contact lenses then prescribed so I could comfortable use them with computers and I would remove my glasses when I wore them to look at the computer as well.
So your request is not out of the ordinary but your optometrist might not have encountered this issue before. It is not something that is typically covered in the studies as it is a more recent issue. If it was covered it was about elderly people needing reading glasses to be able to even read the newspaper or a book, not 30-something getting tired looking at a screen all day.
Wearing contacts in only one eye is not recommended as it does make the eyes behave differently from each other. The contact lenses change how the eyes react to moisture and dust so you want to keep these the same. When I lost one contact lens it would start tearing up while the remaining contact would become too dry. You can get “dummy” contact lenses if you only need to correct vision in one eye. But in most cases you use a weaker lens to get better vision anyway.
If you find that you get more tired when looking at the computer screen with the lenses then without then I would recommend buying a cheap pair of computer glasses. You can wear them in addition to your contact lenses with the added benefit that you can easily take them off. Even leave them at work as you do not need them at home, or if you spend eight hours a day in front of a computer screen at home just buy two pairs as they are very cheap compared to your custom made glasses.
You can, but you’ll pay for it. Due to a TBI I have a very specific set of glasses for work. My computer screens are clear, but everything around them is deliberately, heavily blurred to reduce visual input. They are heavily tinted a weird shade of red. They are impossible to walk with or even turn to have a conversation with a coworker. They are an absolute godsend.
Gonna add another +1 to getting a new eye doctor. I’ve been -3 in my left eye and -5 in my right for as long as I can remember and every set of glasses and contacts has been matched specifically to those numbers. I also have astigmatism in both. Never been told to do anything different and my eyes are as healthy as can be (aside from needing corrective lenses lol)
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