Man, Life Can Be Tough Sometimes!

I’ve been going to the same eye doctor for many years. He was recommended to me because I had the lead role in a Church play and my character required me to shed by glasses for contacts. He has always been excellent in explaining all the various options and he steered me to the mono vision contacts, one for close, and one for far sighting. This has worked very well for me and today I wear the 30 day disposables which have been great.

I do have, however, some complications. I cannot today, nor have I ever been able to put my own contacts in, period, end of story. This has been a source of smirks and smiles around the doctor’s office but without my wife I would be back in glasses. I’ve messed them up a few times and ended up having to go with only one eye until I could get back home. My wife doesn’t mind putting them in but she sometimes gets aggravated and warns me to please not try and help her. Man, life can be tough sometimes.

I will never forget one day when I was at the doctor’s for a check-up when one of his new assistants came and told me she had heard I was not able to put my own contacts in. I told her I had fifteen years of proof to validate what she had heard. She blurted out that there had been no one she had ever taught to put contacts in who had failed to learn how. One thing I admire is someone with confidence in their professional abilities. She asked if I wanted her to teach me how to put my contacts in. I told her I would like nothing more than for her to do this very thing. Some forty five minutes later she was totally frustrated and angry, not at herself for not being able to train me, but at me for not being able to learn how. Man, life can be tough sometimes.

While my contacts are great they have always lacked the identical sharpness found in my regular glasses. I was told this is because of optics and other technical stuff, blah, blah, blah. Another slight problem is the fact that at night when wearing my contacts there is typically a small halo around lights especially those in the far distance. I don’t have any of these things when I wear my regular glasses. One day I landed on what I thought would be a brilliant way to solve this problem.

The next time I went to my doctor I told him I wanted him to make me a pair of glasses for driving, especially at night. He said he would be glad to make them but he thought I had said my regular glasses work really well. I told him my regular glasses did work very well but I needed a special pair of glasses. He said okay let’s get your contacts out and I’ll retest your eyes. No. You still don’t understand. I want you to test my eyes with my contacts in and make me a pair of driving glasses that I can wear with my contacts, so that I can have my night vision as sharp as it can be. You want me to make you a pair of glasses to wear with your contacts? Right? Bingo!

You see the way I figured this out is that if you can grind optics and make glasses like my regular ones then surely you can do the same with a pair made for me to wear with my contacts. Even if I could use my regular glasses that would require me to remove my contacts which I would then have to wait until my wife could put them back in, I think you understand now, right? Eight plus years of medical training, many years of experience, and he’s still scratching his head on this one. He mumbled something about how most people want to get rid of glasses that’s why they get contacts but finally he did what I asked, made me a super fine pair of driving glasses and they work great and I only wear them to drive or when we go to see a movie. Got it done, turned out great but I was exhausted from the process. Man, life can be tough sometimes.

As far as the contact installation procedure goes, we count it a really good day at our house whenever my contacts go in on the first try. My wife always says the same thing, “Thank You, Lord”. She was there that day the lady tried to train me so I think she would like to stay as far away from that kind of ordeal as possible. Hey, but what about me? I’m the one who has the disability and I’m the one who was mistreated! Man, life can be tough sometimes. More later……………..