just plain old bad vision with mini-Sclerals?

[DG65]

I have been seeing a good Scleral doctor since July trying to correct my post Lasik issues. I have been through roughly 6 sets of lenses and my vision is still blurry - night vision is awful. Comfort is marginal and the jury is still out on this last set. I'm not sure if they are considered mini's at 14mm but I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off with something larger. My optimism is dwindling and I don't think I can afford to make these trips much longer.

[jackolso]

My blurry vision

My blurry vision comes from two problems. My vision varies slightly from day to day because I'm diabetic, and over the last 3 or 4 years I have developed dry eye that is fluctuates between stage 2 and stage 3. Dry eye really made my vision blurry. My right eye seems worse than my left eye. So basically, I can't bend the lenses in my eye with a crowbar. I have no ability to change focal length with my eye muscles the way people generally do.

Early in the morning I can read, work on the computer and see distances fairly well. I’m a plus prescription so my reading is the issue. The more I write or look at my computer screen, the worse my vision gets. As I work throughout the day, my vision becomes declines.. By early evening I can’t see much that isn’t blurry or distorted. Sometimes by dinner time, I can no longer read at all, or if I do read I have to live with the blurry words. I’m normally a very fast reader, but I can’t read fast when I can’t see well.

In September I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a pair of glasses that had won the Journal’s Silver award for innovation. Essentially, Trufocals have a lens in them that bends just like the natural lens in a human eye. In front of the inner lens is another lens that has an individual’s prescription in it. That means that in addition to your specific prescription, the focal length is adjustable up to an add of 2.75. It's the same as having a variable lens like they use in your eye doc's office to fit you with glasses.

I got my first pair the first week of November, and so far they’ve made a huge difference in the number of hours that I’m able to work in a day, and at night I can adjust them so I can read. I’ve had to fight blurry vision for years at night.

If you want to read about them, go to the Superfocus website or google Wall Street Journal and Trufocals. Popular Science gave them an innovation award also. I was skeptical as to whether they would help my problems in particular. I knew the glasses could replace progressives and bifocals, especially for people that have multiple pairs of glasses, but my problems are more complicated than that. The Superfocus people have a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee so if I didn’t like them or they didn’t work I could send them back. For me that was the deciding factor, and after a few weeks of using them I’m definitely not sending them back. At the end of November I ordered a second pair because if anything happens to these I’m back in the same vision nightmare I’ve been in for several years. That’s not going to happen, so I’ll keep a spare pair handy.

The glasses range in price from $700 to $900. They make them to your prescription so it takes a few weeks to get them. If you give them this code when you order by phone or online SO-001153 they’ll give you a 10% discount. Their website www.superfocus.com gives you all the information you need to place an order. I posted a blog entry on their site that explains more about my problems.

The prescription lenses on the front pop off so you can order multiple pairs of lens for $80 a pair. I have a couple of different sets of lenses for different activities. Sometimes my eyes are really bad so I need a stronger script. Most people need only their prescription lenses. I guess competition shooters really like these, and they use multiple lenses.

I have no idea if these would help your problems. The demand has been so high since the Journal article, it now takes 8 weeks to get them so it's not a quick fix. I posted a blog on their website explaining more about my problems. The easily replaceable prescription lenses make it simple for me to compensate for my right eye if it gets worse than my left on any given day. I just put on a stronger add on the right side which re-balances the binocular effect. There are a lot of user reviews out there and some video that demonstrates the glasses.

They’ve worked very well for me. I know the frustration of poor vision. Good luck finding a solution.

[Rebecca Petris]

I have been seeing a good Scleral doctor since July trying to correct my post Lasik issues. I have been through roughly 6 sets of lenses and my vision is still blurry - night vision is awful. Comfort is marginal and the jury is still out on this last set. I'm not sure if they are considered mini's at 14mm but I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off with something larger. My optimism is dwindling and I don't think I can afford to make these trips much longer.

DG65, I'm sorry to hear that. When you say vision is still blurry - is it blur, ghosting, some of both? any progress being made or vision still just not better enough to be worth it?

Night vision can be the hardest to tackle. Personally, the first lenses I had that greatly improved my night vision were 14.5mm reverse geometry lenses but the 18.5mm sclerals I have now do an excellent job with night vision as well. I wonder if maybe a different kind of lens altogether might be helpful? Sigh. Such a frustrating process. I'm sorry.

Jackolso, fyi no glasses, including trufocals, address corneal surface irregularities which is what this user is facing.

[DG65]

When you say vision is still blurry - is it blur, ghosting, some of both? any progress being made or vision still just not better enough to be worth it?

To be honest, my vision is actually better without "any" lenses despite my severe imbalance but the headaches are more than I can stand.

To make it as brief as possible my left eye has the usual, i.e. some halo and mild starbursting as well as double vision to the 5 o'clock, overall fuzziness and over correction of "at least" +1.0. Night vision is a disaster throughout the color spectrum with double vision in reds, starbursting in yellows and major distorted starbursting in greens.

My right eye is somewhere between -.25 and -.50 with halos and moderate starbursting. Reds are better in the right eye except for LED's or small, bright reds that end up in triplicate. Yellows are bad and greens are so bad the starbursts from traffic lights can fill an intersection from 2 blocks away.

Both eyes have what I would call pixilated fogginess around lights. Almost like very fine angelhair starbursting with pixilated light.

With the Sclerals my overall vision is, well, blurry. Distance is fuzzy and reading is nearly impossible. The starbursting is better but the lights, as well as everything else is just plain fuzzy and lights seem to have a fog around them like on a foggy night. Reds (and some other lights) in the left eye are smeared up and to the right (1 or 2 o'clock) and in the right they are smeared up and to the left (10 or 11 o'clock). The last 2 pairs haven't been much different from each other.

I can always feel the lenses in but the worse part is I can't handle them for more than 4 hrs - the itching drives me crazy.

The really depressing part of all this is I drive 110 miles round trip to work... and of course, it's all in the dark. I wear a soft contact in the left eye to balance my vision and it's all I can do to keep it in all day and by the evening trip home it has made a serious mess out of my vision. Every trip to Chicago brings hope only to feel discouraged upon leaving his office knowing the new lenses aren't going to work, either, but I'm told to wear them a couple weeks so he can get an accurate evaluation on the next step. He made a comment at the last visit (not word for word) that this might be all that can be done.

To make matters worse is we care for our granddaughter and we're just about at our financial end and I've told my wife I'm about to call it quits with the lenses and just make due. Something I'm really not sure I can do but sure that it's no longer in the budget.

Sorry to unload on you but I have nobody I can vent to that understands.