Soooo I finally went in for my eye exam and now have disposable contacts to try so I can actually see properly for the first time in about a year!!  (I actually have very horrible vision, so anything is such a contrast to the way the world looks without my glasses I hadn't realized til today JUST how not good the glasses were, lol... I've needed glasses since the second grade, so it's very hard for me to even remember what it was like to be able to just wake up and be able to see clearly unless I like fall asleep with my contacts in. Genuinely, my near sightedness is bad enough that even if I got lasik surgery, I'd still need light glasses or contacts to get me to 20/20 if we wanted to avoid damaging my eyes and so I've never even considered it for me.  Everything beyond about a foot further from my face is a blur without glasses or contacts. It's -9 in my right eye and -9.5 in my left plus some astigmatism correction and more astigmatism in my left... In contacts my left is -8.5 and my right is -8 and only my left eye needs correction for astigmatism in contacts... Which is why even an 18 year old prescription which was like -8.25 and -8.75 and minimal correction for any astigmatism was "good enough" for me to be managing with even though it was definitely NOT good enough for an optometrist visit level testing, lol.) 

This is the eye appointment that I needed to schedule last year before I went to Seattle and I kept telling everyone quite stubbornly last January/February 'if I don't get it done before i got to Seattle or while I'm in Seattle, I won't be ABLE to get it done for an entire year!" and everyone kept asking why and I'd just tell them, 'o well, there will be as much Irish season as possible before St. Patrick's Day. And then i just won't be able to. Don't ask. you don't want to know. This is a precog thing."  I told my eye doctor the shortened version of that as apology for why my contact prescription was from 2019 and my most recent glasses prescription I had was from 2018 and she laughed said, "O, it's like you were psychic." and we both just sort of laughed a little uncomfortably then moved on.

I apologized even further for my glasses I've been wearing and how awful they were going to make my baseline testings.  (I haven't replaced my glasses in so long that the plastic in the frames is yellowed not clear. So old that the plastic of it is literally disintegrating along the ear pieces from wear looks like it's been chewed on. I did the math today and realised those glasses are from fall of 2003... Yep. 18 years with the same pair of glasses... But I genuinely wear my contacts 95% of the time I'm not sleeping - I prefer them with my extreme myopia. And these glasses are actually from before the astigmatism in my left eye got bad enough to need more correcting -- something that became super obvious as soon as we had me doing any of the one eyed testing. Whoops! Also I've been mildly nervous low key subconscious stressed out anxious about breaking them with having zero backups in contacts or glasses form -- especially since the right lens got a small crack in it at some point this winter that's been slowly getting worse.  It was the weight of that anxiety I could so easily fix that finally made me schedule my damn optometrist appointment.... I need one every year for contacts, and yet II haven't replaced my glasses in 18 years... Yep. Have I ever mentioned that I'm exceptionally good at making do with whatever I've got?  I'm not going to buy glasses from next door -- their estimate for Hoya lenses was $611, $11 after what my insurance covers plus whatever the price of the frames above $150... Yeah no. I intend to go to EyeMart Express tomorrow and take advantage of one of their pricing and quick turn around and trying them on to get me something usable and not older than Mikaela is and then buy myself a backup pair from like Zenni or Warby Parker if they have any I like.  I really loathed the glasses shapes from like 2012-2018, they didn't suit my face at all, and I decided that if I was going to spend even the absic $50-$200 on a pair of glasses I should at least not hate the way they look on my face. So I decided to stick to my very old prescription that was completely not even any good at all for me as my backup to contacts and for at night.  Anyway. I'll up to $200 invest in a new pair of glasses, but I ain't got $600+ to drop on a pair of glasses AND still have to order contacts and who knows what all else this year will be bringing me...)

Anyway, it was super funny because after popping in the disposable trial contacts she gave me to try while waiting for the astigmatism trials to come in she ordered before we finalize my contact scrip I turned to the wall and she gave me a wry grin said, "Bet you can actually read the TV now." and I said "Yep. Wait! What's your middle name?" and she looked confused told me 'Rachel" and I said, "I JUST realized that we have practically the same names -- you're Danielle Rachel and I'm Daniella Raechelle. Out at the front desk they just said your last name and I couldn't read the diplomas before!" We got a good chuckle at that and it turned out she's also Jewish with a non-Jewish last name (hers is Sicilian-Arabic while mine is French) and she recognized the Hebrew version of Rachel immediately when I said it -- which is why as a kid I just introduced it as Rae because it was easier than the teasing about the chet which to American schoolkids sounds like a hairball.) It was just really funny that I hadn't even realized til we got something approaching my actual prescription in though she had noticed the similarity when she was reading through my new patient info, lol.

Also, apparently, she can see in the blood vessels of my eyes under the scope that I do have mild allergy, probably cat, but if it's not bothering me not to worry about it. And when I'm not around cats, like when I was living downtown in college without any pets, I actually DID sneeze from them whenever I visited one. But when I'm around cats regularly, I don't show any allergy symptoms to them. but nearly everyone on my da's side of the family have mild to severe cat allergy, though most of us still own them and live with them. 

Anyway, I'm super happy with them as optometrists and really got along with Danielle. I'm actually scheduled to go back in a month because I opted to do the retinal image annual wellness scan ($44 NOT covered by my Delta Dental/Eye Med insurance) because of how bad my myopia is it means the curvature of my cornea is more prone to potential retinal tearing/detachment which needs to be caught immediately AND I have the family history of glaucoma from my paternal grandmother AND green/grey eyes are the most damaged by UV prone to cancers so I'd RATHER get the baseline imaging and scanning on a regular basis just in case. If there's something going on in the retina or optic nerve, the earlier you know the better to start dealing with it if one must.  My optic nerve and retina look good and my pressures are completely normal BUT there's thinning on the rim that could be related to either my corneal shape (see the high scrip) OR the genetic predisposition toward glaucoma and we can't get an accurate visual field test to determine which without me having a scrip that is correct (especially for the astigmatism) because the astigmatism shuttering if not corrected can mess up visual field testing.  Also, given my family predisposition, insurance will cover the glaucoma testing as a followup appointment but not in the same visit due to health insurance codes or she would have just done it today. So I'll be back there in about a month and we need to finalize the contacts scrip anyway.  

Even though I'll be buying my glasses elsewhere, I'll probably just order my contacts through them since there's only like an $8 difference for a year's supply between Brandon Eyes small business and 1800 Contacts. I can't afford to buy the glasses from them, but I can swing ordering my contacts through them for the little bit extra it is and I will continue using them for my eye exams moving forward unless we switch health/dental/eye care insurance companies again... 

Also, if I'm going to only buy myself glasses once every 18 years and never have even a backup pair, I could probably spend more on them then just a Zenni/Warby Parker pair, lol. 

Also though, LOOK at how beat up these are (and they haven't even made this sort of shape in glasses for at least a decade, lol.  They're some straight up vintage Kate Spade glasses.... Literally. They're 18 year old Kate Spade frames. We can call them legit vintage now...

Yep. And remember, that plastic on the sides was clear when I got them NOT yellowed...and it's never been chewed on, that's just the breakdown of the plastic itself over years as it gets brittle and tiny bits break off.... When I say I can stoic through and deal with inconvenience/discomfort/pain that's not a joke or exaggeration, it's just a simple statement about my nature. I will make do with what I've got if it's all I've got. (In this case I just had to call and schedule and appointment AND find a pair/style I liked on my face AND have the money to afford what I found that I liked...and that didn't align so I just kept wearing contacts all the time and now here we are 18 years later and I damn well need to find something I like "well enough" over at Eye Mart Express to use my insurance coverage on so I'll have a decent backup if nothing else, lol. (It's $150 on a pair of frames OR $150 in contacts and then discounts on lenses and an extra 20% off after that $150 that's covered. I'll spend it towards the glasses this time and get a good pair to last me. I can get cheap pairs that i try on digitally and hope I don't hate when they arrive n person at a later time...)  

But genuinely, you should probably never trust me if I say "It's fine, I can handle this" because it's probably something where we should fix it and not have me living for an entire year with no backup form of prescription lenses other than my 18 year old glasses with pitted yellowed plastic that looks like it's been chewed on when it hasn't AND a cracked lens AND loose hinges that feel ready to break AND the prescription in them don't even properly correct for my astigmatism so I'm getting 20/30 vision in the right eye and like 20/50 in the left eye even with the glasses I'm "making do" with because "it's what I've got right now."  I mean, genuinely, I really OUGHT to have been made to deal with my glasses situation sooner even if I still waited for the staff/optometrists to get vaccinated at least before scheduling my appointment following the world shut down pandemic, lol. I mean, at least to have ordered A pair of glasses with the 2018 scrip to have SOMETHING for daily use instead of what I was making do with from fall of 2003 because it's what I already had in my possession... Like I said, my capacity is high for making do is something you should really question, especially when it could actively be harmful to me and/or is fairly easy to correct.  Instead of accepting me saying, "I can make do survive with this" even if that's accurate you should ask me, "Can we make this better?" and then get me to do the steps to make it better instead of making do and muddling through with accepting what I've got to work with.  Like that's legitimately behavior patterns in me to push me on instead of letting me be stoic about because we don't live in a century of deprivation or such abject poverty for me to NEED to make do instead of taking care of my basic physical/emotional needs in this life. So legitimately, you can call me on my "I can make do with what little I have" when I clearly shouldn't or we could easily make things better if I just acknowledged I SHOULDN'T just make do stoic thorugh as is.

That said, now I've got contacts and can see again without my eyes hidden behind lenses, I'm back to the huge anime eyed Disney princess green-grey-blue sea colored eyes that change colors with my emotions that you're accustomed to seeing from me.lol.

So, I mean, there's that. Also, I prefer wearing contacts because the blurriness outside the frames with glasses can give me headaches and causes me not to use my peripheral vision as much which can lead to visual field loss which can look like glaucoma or macular degeneration from not exercising those eye muscles.  I feel much safer driving when I'm wearing contacts than glasses because of that peripheral vision blurring outside the glasses themselves...

Anyway, I feel great relief that I have a prescription AND that I will go get an updated pair of glasses this week over at Eye Mart Express so I will no longer be relying on my 18 year old beat up cracked lens not even my current prescription pair as my only ability to not be almost completely blind, lol. I also have 5 pairs of the "one day" contacts to try and I'll get another trial set when they come in with the astigmatism correction for my left eye. And then I'll order a year's supply from them (and remember to order another year's supply right before this contact scrip expires to stretch out between optometry visits (unless that thinning isn't just the natural shape of my cornea and I need some form of nightly prescription eye drops (I think these are the ones that can actually make your eyelashes grow longer/thicker -- which is NOT a side effect I need since mine are already ridiculous wihtout any eye makeup)  to stave off worsening glaucoma losing my peripheral vision as I age. And then I'll need to ACTUALLY be better about my annual optometry visits actually being annual)