Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of vision correction for me post Lasik has been the inability to get what I see through the phoropter in the OD's office into a pair of glasses. Understand that what I see, the quality of my vision, is awful — huge glare, haloes, ghosting and loss of contrast. But even so, last week when I was able to read the 20/20 line for near vision, for the first time since I got toasted in July 2001, I was delighted.

My disappointment was palpable when I picked up my new glasses today and put them on. The aberrations were so much more pronounced with them than without them that they are worse than worthless. I thought perhaps because the lighting the OD's office is all fluorescent, I might be able to see better in my own office where the light is blindingly bright, so I took them with me to try them there. Before I left, the optician checked them over carefully and found that they had been made exactly according to specifications.They were no better even in brighter light.

I love my OD. He's willing to work with me, no matter how long it takes, nor how many times we have to redo everything. I cannot complain about any aspect of my vision care. But that doesn't mitigate the disappointment and frustration, the collapsing illusion, once again, of being so near and yet so far away from achieving acceptable vision.

Just kind of an observation, (though I don't know if it's even worth pondering,) but isn't a phoropter a kind of a 'tube' with interchangeable lenses? It's possible that the design of this machine cuts off the light from the more oblique angles while only letting the more perpendicular ones through. When you levitate your best prescription out in front of your eyes like a floating lens, you'll not stop the light from the more obtuse angles...possibly this may be contributing to the major difference you get between the phoropter and glasses. Just a guess.

JohnnyB

I went back yesterday to try to figure out the issues. Unfortunately, I will have to go back, since my vision was so unstable and my contrast so poor that we couldn't duplicate any reading for either close or distance lenses. One thing we discovered was that the pupil distance was off by about 5mm in the readers, which makes a huge difference for me. The axis of my astigmatism in the right eye also had appeared to change by more than 10 degrees, but I was having way too much trouble and working way too hard just to see the chart for the results to mean much. I'll go back next week and try again.

As I walked in to his office, my OD said, "It's a good thing I love you so much." When we got all done about an hour later, I said to him, "Yes, it is a very good thing you love me so much." I can't imagine the people out in the waiting room loved me so very much...No charge for the hour-long exam. He's next to a saint.