Well, due partially to a strange side effect of the Lasik and partially due to the blissfully few genes I have inherited from “Mother”; I now suffer from severe double vision. I think at times I am giving Streisand a run for her money. Fortunately (and surprisingly), I don’t have the nose that Streisand does.
So… post Lasik. My vision is 20-25 (about .25 or .50 diopter). I can’t complain. No, it’s not 20-20. But since, pre op it was 20-5000 (7.25 diopter) which meant that beyond 8″ I was blurring. I’m pretty happy.
I noticed the problem most prevalently about 3 months ago while childing an EGC Mass. I couldn’t focus on the other child. More properly, I couldn’t fuse the two of hir into one of hir. I say “hir” because it was our sister “R.”
I noticed on the drive home at night I was getting very tired and my vision was atrociously crossed. So it was time to go into the doctor’s.
It turns out that my potent glasses had been prism-ing light for quite some time and my muscles had weakened. Since “Mother” also suffers from this; it was natural that given the chance as I got older it would happen to me.
Now, it was minor when I got the lasik, but it’s more pronounced now. (Most people when tired get a ‘1’ or may a ‘1.5’ of cross. I currently have an 8.
So, the new glasses came in on Wednesday. Nice little ones. I’m not into big frames. This may be because as a kid in the 70’s I had the honour of wearing glasses that made Woody Allen look like a stud.
To fix my vision the light is bent by putting prisms into my glasses. This way, my crossed vision doesn’t need to uncross to see distance as a single image. However, this miracle of science comes with a price.
When the prism is that strong, there is a side-effect. Anyone who’s ever held a prism on a sunny day has seen this. The prism, refracts the colours at different spaces. I prism should just redirect the light at an angle. But some prisms actually shift the light (Thus the rainbow effect)
What this does, however, if shift some colours one way in my left eye, and the opposite way in my right eye. The end result, since colours are shifted in my eyes, they take on a new three-D appearance. Even when 2-D flat. Reds begin to look a hair further away than they are. Blue/greens move closer than they really are. Traffic lights are a trip. As are tail lights and LED’s.
The effect has been used with far softer prisms in Science Centre, 3-D laser shows. That use colour rather than polarization or double red-green images to create the effect of dimension. A note. This is fun when there is lots of neon or even better, when the Christmas lights are out. (Which should be starting in about 2 months 😉
If you are curious about this…or even better have managed to acquire a pair of these glasses, check out Chromatek’s web site
So… until my eyes adjust. Things in vibrant colours (on black or white backgrounds in particular) will cause me to stare with a dopey smile that makes me look like I’m stoned. Who need’s recreational pharmaceuticals, when I get the fun ones prescribed.