Written By Despina
Contributing Optometrist

I’m having a great time with my normalized this week, now that the Godzilla of a headache has gone. I’m finding it really comfortable and at most times of the day I can see very well. I’m lucky enough to live somewhere that has 360 days of bright sunlight. As you have probably noticed by now, this makes a tremendous difference, especially when compared to vision in the basement room of a gym. Fluorescent lights all round, and things are blurred!  I too particularly dislike fluorescent lights, always have done, even aged 11 when I insisted my parents remove them from the kitchen. There’s something so ugly and unnatural about the light the emit.

One thing I did notice a couple of days ago, though, was that my right eye, with the normalized, was seeing a lot clearer than the left, with the -4.25 contact lenses. And on active focus, it was only the right eye getting clarity. The left eye was getting left behind.

My original distance contact lenses were -5.00, right and left, so I just reduced both but 0.75. What I forgot to take into account was that my left eye had been previously under-corrected to help me with near vision. My original distance contact lens prescription, pre-presbyopia, was R -5.00, L-5.50. So yesterday I went and bought a new pair of monthly lenses ( luckily we can just buy over-the-counter out here, something I found a bit bizarre when I first moved here after being used to strict UK regulations), reducing this distance prescription by 1 diopter in both eyes, ie. R-4.00, L -4.50. My vision is much more balanced now, 20/30 in each eye in room lights, and 20/20 in bright daylight.

I had in fact noticed from the start that the left eye was more blurred, but I put it down to astigmatism, tear film etc, and kept blinking to get it clearer. It was only when I checked it during active focus that I realised the left eye was asleep.

So the moral of this post is to check each eye individually, especially during active focus, and make sure both are doing the same amount of work.?