Hi there!
I’m pretty discouraged following 3+ months of lens reordering and trying new labs and still not being happy with my glasses. Long post, but there’s a lot to this.
For reference, I have very “different” eyes: a cataract in one eye since birth (that eye is lazy and hardly used to see even though based on my prescription you’d think it’s my good eye), and astigmatism and near sightedness severely in my other eye. I will attach my prescription.
In the past, I’ve had a nightmarish time every time I get new glasses, but this time has been the most discouraging.
I’ve known that in the past I could only wear plastic lenses because polycarbonate distorted my vision too severely. (I had maybe a pea sized spot in my FoV that was in focus and everything else was not just blurred, but was similar to a 3d effect where I saw triple vision in rainbow colors like prisms. It was maddening and drove me to tears trying to see.)
I got a new prescription for the first time in 6 years in February, and ordered the new lenses in plastic. They arrived and were as thick as my thumb. The new frames were nearly identical to my old ones and the new prescription was barely different from my old one, so I don’t know why the new ones were double the thickness. This eye center then said “you’re mistaken, your old ones are polycarbonate that’s why they’re thinner than these new plastic ones” so I believed them, we reordered in poly, and when they arrived they were thinner but I had the aforementioned prism issue with the poly.
By this point I went for a second opinion to a “better” optician’s office (that according to the old office uses a more specialized lab), and they confirmed that the old glasses were plastic, and that I must not be a good fit for poly. Great! We reordered in plastic (again) and they said they’d thin them as much as possible. Again, my “old” glasses were confirmed plastic and were thick but nowhere near unwearable or even noticeable on the thickness unless you REALLY looked hard, so I had faith I could do plastic lenses that weren’t an inch thick.
Those new plastic ones just came in, and while they’re much better than the first plastic ones (these were rolled & polished unlike the others, even though I paid for them to be done both times, and overall the cut looked better.) however, one of my lenses is still MUCH thicker than I’ve ever had before in a pair of glasses. So thick that I feel hideous in them, I’m crying daily looking in the mirror.
My question: is there ANY help for me with this prescription or am I destined to have one ugly coke bottle lens while the other is regular? If I can’t wear Poly, is High Index even worth trying? I know High Index will thin them nicely, but if I can’t wear Poly then how could I wear High Index? Is this ANYTHING anyone is familiar with? I’d love thin HI lenses but since Poly is so bad for me, I don’t understand how HI would be any better. My vision with the plastic is great, they’re just near unwearable aesthetically. (This is maybe irrelevant but I’m a young woman and it makes me extremely self conscious and un-feminine to have this one thick ugly lens distorting my face, it looks like a monocle.)
Follow up: would contacts even be possible or a good idea for me then? I’ve always been scared of them but at this point if that’s my only hope of looking “normal,” I’ll do anything.
Attaching photos of prescription as well as the current plastic lenses from different angles showcasing the thickness I’m so self conscious about.