A warning to all those with short sight

[annwfyn]

This is just a short note coz I think there are a fair few people who wear contacts on my friends list.

Now, as some of you may not be aware, the law relating to the sale and dispensing of contact lenses apparently changed on July 1st. What this means is that if you have not had an eye test/contact lense check up within the last year, it is illegal for an optician to give you contact lenses.

What that means is, if like my best beloved, you have not had your eyes tested since 1999 and you lose a contact lense, most opticians will not give you anything. Furthermore, most opticians have a week's waiting list for contact lense related appointments. Even if you have had an eye test recently, no optician can give you contacts unless they have the go ahead from your usual optician.

Jez lost a contact lense on Sunday, and after much hunting we managed to find a nice optician who was prepared to give us a couple of daily disposables as it was an emergency. We then got in touch with his opticians in Wales to order a new contact lense, only to be told yesterday that they could not give him a new contact lense due to him having left Wales in 1999 and not having been back since. "Oh dear" said Sally. "We only have enough contact lenses to last until Friday". One long day later, spent walking around every single goddamn optician I can find, and finally resorting to a series of sob stories ("could you just let me have a single contact lense? Just so my boyfriend can drive home tonight. He lost his contact lense this morning while at work, and I can't drive") I have managed to blag another five contact lenses (from four different opticians) in order to keep him together until Wednesday when he is due to have an appointment with Dolland and Aitchison in Surrey Quays.

As an additional warning, I got new glasses today. I don't think I want to say how much they cost, but I'm shortly going to be looking a bit fragile as I recover from the surgery. At least I didn't use that kidney much anyway. I yearned for Peru where a pair of glasses cost about £70 in total!

Looking back over this, it looks a bit whiney, and it isn't meant to be. I just figured it might be worth mentioning that for those of you who do rely heavily on contact lenses and aren't up to date with an eye test - go sort! Otherwise worlds of trouble may await.

Comments

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

It's all a plot to get us to pay out for expensive laser eye surgery. Though I would pay for it if I got laser eyes out of it.

Me, I wear glasses because, like my beard, I am not allowed to not have them. I somehow suspect that Jo's next demand will be I never take off the brown paper bag either, she seems to like hiding my face away.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I was very distressed when I heard the actual limits of cyborg technology. You know you can't actually graft any form of weaponry to the body with any real degree of success?

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

WHAT? Will they at least chop off my feet and attach cyber-feet with built-in rollerblades?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Well, I hope so. I'm sure if we started off by chopping off your feet some nice doctor would see sense and give you the cybernetic feet.

If they didn't it would be cruelty!

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

You can duct-tape a rounders bat to someone's hand. That's pretty successful, provided you like redecorating, or are partial to lots of small pieces of crockery.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

I've been wearing glasses since I was 18 months old (also known as "forever"), and I really can't imagine not having them. I don't really need them that badly, since whilst my left eye's pretty knackered, my right eye's just lazy, but I've worn them all the time for so long it just wouldn't occur to me to ever not have glasses.

Besides, no-one really sees me that often without glasses. I could concievably remove them to conceal my superhero identity.

[chrisvenus]

has Jez not got glasses as backup for lack of contact lenses?

I think it makes sense that if they are giving you pieces of plastic to put in your eyes that they look at them every now and again. I got my contact lens check up for free (as long as I bought lenses) so its not like it even cost me much more.

It sounds to me like a bit of planning would have solved this problem (with apologies for sounding preachy) since a pair of backup glasses are an obvious thing to have. Even without this new law you can't guarantee getting them at short notice. If he has a pair of glasses that he doesn't want to wear for some reason (vanity being the only one I can think of) then, well, that's just plain silly.

Also not having an optician's appointment for six years sounds a little careless too. I generally make sure I go at least every two years because even if my eyesight has only changed a little it sometimes is significantly worse and thus I really do want new lenses/glasses/whatever.

I guess I've had bad eyesight and worn glasses for the last 20 years and I've never found it a pain (though my coloured contacts are annoying because one seems to get uncomfortable after an hour or so) but I just felt an urge to respond to "Bad eyesight. Its a pain."

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

He isn't allowed glasses - his right eye is too short sighted. His sight is -16.5. His optician has refused to give them to him in the past.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

And yes. Planning would have been good. On the other hand, how many people do we know who don't get around to things they intended to do? Or who vaguely remember that they know their prescription, so why bother etc? My eyesight has been stable for the last 10 years now, so although I do still get my eyes checked up every couple of years, in the back of my brain it's always something I do when I get around to it, or when my glasses start to get a bit old. Basically, this wasn't intended as a whinge - more as a warning coz I really didn't know that one legally can't get emergency contacts if you lose one, which you always could before.

Possibly the last sentences were a little whingey, but I always feel a strange and compulsive need to end LJ entries with some kind of closure. It's a bad writing style thing.

[commlal.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, daily disposables are _a big con_ and can be cleaned like normal contact lenses.

Personally I can't stand the idea of the damn things. I'm naked with out my glasses.

[hildekitten.livejournal.com]

Same here.
I hate contacts.
Good thing I like wearing glasses (altho that's probably mainly because they allow me to see haha)

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I shall pass that on, but I know when I had daily disposables I normally found that they started to go a bit icky after being left overnight in solution. They usually would last a second day but would be painful and a third day never worked.

At least, that was my experience. Others may vary.

[hildekitten.livejournal.com]

I'm just happy I love my glasses so much :)
No contacts for me, can't stand them.

[melsner.livejournal.com]

Blagging and South America. People go through less trouble for hard drugs.

[wyldcard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I believe that's the law in NZ as well.

It doesn't help on short notice, but my optometrist was easily contactable (no pun intended), and as he had always done an eye exam on me in the last year, I got replacements fairly easily.

Of course, over here I've been slack, and just ordered over the internet instead...