A quick post today, for those among us who are battling low myopia.
As you know, I used to wear a -4.00 prescription, with quite a bit of astigmatism correction, and was told that I really needed to think about a -5.00. It wasn’t smooth sailing getting that down to -1.50 territory, no astigmatism correction, but once I figured out the system, it was fairly predictable.
Except that last diopter. That wasn’t easy at all.
We talked about all this in other posts. It’s much harder to quantify a 20% improvement at 1 diopters. Lighting, sleep, stress, diet, all now play a relatively more significant role, and can frankly drive you a bit nuts.
A -5.00 is comparably simple to work on. You’re chopping away at a big rock. It’s easy to tell when you’re making progress.
But a -1.00 is like shaping a match stick. One day you feel like you’re almost there, and the next things are blurry. You second guess your close-up, you mess around with plus, with no plus, with more outside time, with less. You stop wearing glasses, even though you’re not ready.
It’s a bit of a different game, the last diopter.
For one, you really need the plus lens for close-up here. No two ways about it. You also want to be fully equalized, have sorted out latent astigmatism, and always remember to not lean in, to blink clear any blur. Habits, habits, habits.
And you need the -1.00 glasses, at least part of the time. You want to be used to clear vision outside, so that you have the right mindset (visual cortex expecting clarity). You need to train yourself to catch and read road signs (reading is so very key). Stop for a second, clear up a blurry sign.
Do it without glasses for half a day on the weekends, and then with glasses the other half. If you notice a tension headache at the end of a day outdoors, you know you pushed it a bit too far, with not quite enough correction. No matter. Try to do it a few hours less next time. Keep the glasses with you. And keep plus glasses with you. You need to get past the point where it’s annoying and a hassle, to where it’s all just habit.
And you need the landmarks. If you pass by a coffee shop or bus station every day, check in with the signs. Clear text? Blur? Find something that’s challenging today, so you have something to compare next month, in six months.
The last diopter is a bit of a bastard. If you come from high myopia, you’re tempted to just let it be here. You can get by without glasses, you just wear them for added convenience. Things slack off, it’s not an urgent project anymore the way it was at -5. You’re pretty satisfied. The amount of effort vs. the payoff just shrunk by the margin of a world of diopters. You shrug, get on with life.
Don’t. Quit. Here.
Adjust your habits. Re-read what I say above. Go back to where you were when you started, and give yourself a month to make the last diopter habits stick.
You can’t quit just before the finish line. Your eyes are still the same stimulus response machines they were all along. What got you down from high myopia, will get you to great, clear vision. You already know how, you just need to adjust your game, dig back in, and make it happen.
You can do it!
Cheers,
-Jake
