People sometimes suggest that I’m too hard on mainstream optometry.
Hopefully lately the tone has been a little less definitive on that front. I’m trying to be more inclusive of potentially open minded optometrists! Progress, right?
And as I point out, my strong bias comes from being exposed to hundreds and thousands (really!) of stories about individual’s experiences with myopia. When you just have your own, perhaps not traumatizing experience, the things I say sometimes may sound harsh. Hey Jake, chill. It’s just some glasses. But when you hear what some people go through, because optometry is stuck in 16th century “medicine” thinking, and also a complete farce, you might see why Jakey gets cranky.
A post in the forum today illustrates this perfectly. Warning: You might genuinely not find this to be ok:
I’ll introduce myself as a 27 year old male from the UK coming from a Chinese background. I am severely myopic with -11.00 in my right eye and -10.75 in my left. I also have astigmatism of -2.25 in both eyes.
I am not exactly sure how my eyes progressed to this state but I guess childhood stress may have paid a role along with unnecessary eye tests forced upon me. I remember my childhood was really tough with a lot emotional and physical abuse from my “tiger” parents. Furthermore I was constantly bullied in school.
When I was really small before wearing glasses, my parents warned me not to become a 4 eyed monster, a reference they used to those who wore glasses. I was really scared and tried to hide the fact that my eyesight was blurry for a long time until my teacher told my dad that I may have vision problems! I was then dragged to the opticians and the eye test report said I was -4.50 and -4.25 and I had to wear glasses. This was 1997/1998 and I was aged 8 or 9.
For the next couple of years, my parents regularly teased me by calling me a 4 eyed monster; I was devastated and hated my glasses but yet my eyes continued to get worse extremely quickly, once as much as 1 diopter in 4 months, or maybe I was over-prescribed, I don’t know. Also, my parents would drag me back to the opticians every few months, in a desperate attempt to “save my vision” whenever it seems to them that I’m seeing less than perfectly by getting up to date glasses immediately. Despite trying to plead that I can see fine, the optometrist’s report always said my eyesight had got worse and of course they believed the optometrist’s words; I was forced to pick new glasses and got scalded at fiercely for not using my eyes properly in the period between. Those were days of hell and I still cringe when thinking about my childhood and glasses. I hated new glasses with a passion as the world becomes severely distorted for a week or so.
My prescription finally stablised at around 2006/2007 (age 17) when I started college and the bullying stopped and parents started to care less about me but the damage was already done. It’s ironic how their mission to “save my vision” may have actually sped it up as they believed glasses halt the progression of myopia, oblivious to lens induced myopia.
Since last week, I have already began wearing a pair of reduced prescription glasses of -10.00 from 2004 and have just signed up to this program. I guess I will have to get another pair with less power as the course progresses, especially for close up work.
I really hope that with this program, I can make my eyesight better and give my eyes back the love which my parents had ruined.
(the whole thread, including comments from my own less-than-awesome childhood)
Four-eyed.monster. And trust me. A lot of kids go through things like this. And if you consider that this whole process is 100% unnecessary for vision health, that myopia is a lie, that doctor titles are (ab-)used to peddle this nonsense lens therapy, that there’s a 100 billion dollar profit motive … how can you not feel a bit upset?
Good potential news, you can find this @endmyopia resource now, and make some better choices for yourself and your wee little offsprings. Hopefully. ;)
Cheers,
-Jake
