Down to -1.50 D: Progress, Patching, Observations

* progress chart forum signature: Janna

The forum is really very helpful for perspectives and insights and individual experiences with reducing myopia.  I highly recommend reading it regularly (if you’re in BackTo20/20), there’s much you can learn from the collective experiences there.

Here’s Matthew’s update from yesterday, working on low diopter equalization:

I’m almost 30 days into a new normalized of L -1.25 / R -1.50. I have been working on patching for several months now, too.

Here’s my observations:

– For the first few days, it seemed easier than the prior normalized of L -1.25 / R -1.75.
– After a few days, it felt like my other reductions. Tough, and lots of double vision, but I followed the same thought pattern as in the past: give it 30 days before evaluating too much.
– Recently, it’s started to settle in and feel pretty good. Vision outside on sunny days is good.
– Lots of double vision without glasses.
– Without glasses vision is better (sometimes, in good conditions, I can see down to 20/30 or so on the snellen for very brief moments)

Equalization is the major goal now. I can tell that once my eyes are really working together, I’ll have an expanded diopter bubble to work with for my no glasses time. Most of the time, I get double vision on the whole snellen (without glasses). It’s not resolving yet, but given that my right eye was at -5.00 in April of 2014, I expect it will take some time. I have a general feeling of potential with my vision, but alongside the potential is a lot of instability. Again, I expect it will take some time, but now I have all the tools to keep progress going.

The part that is immensely psychologically satisfying is that this is my original eyeglasses prescription! I got my records from my childhood ophthalmologist and my first pair of glasses was in November 1993 at L -1.25 / R -1.50. According to the records, I could see 20/50 in my left eye and 20/60 in my right eye at that time. It’s fascinating, because now I know exactly what I could have done at that point to resolve the ciliary myopia and avoid glasses completely.

My confidence level is high. After two decades of increasing prescriptions, now I’m using the original. Yes, this one is an underprescription and it was initially an overprescription. Still, knowing that I have beaten back 20 years of abuse to my eyes is powerful. Progressive myopia is gone forever and isn’t coming back. I’ll give this one at least four months, and then see where I am.

My expectation for going forward is that I’ll try a -1.25 / -1.25 in October or November. At that time, many of us will have low light and the coming of winter to deal with. My hope is that winter will be a good time to let all these changes in my biology catch up. Then, when we get to spring of 2017, I can work on spending some good time outdoors without glasses and hopefully let glasses use naturally fade away.

For everyone reading, keep up what you’re doing. This thing works. When you know that, deep in your self, every bit of blur, double vision, and every bad day is just another opportunity to move closer to freedom from glasses. Keep going and get some stimulus!