Contacts/Glasses and shooting Defensively

D

Derius_T

New member
Maybe a weird post, but running through this thing I call a brain, so here she goes....

I was recently in a situation where I thought I had a split seconds choice to defend myself, and would have been royaly screwed had that been the case.

It was 90+ degrees, and muggy. Took a ride with the 'ol lady to WallyWorld. Had the AC cranking full blast all the way there, so it was really cold. I was wearing my glasses at the time. (BLIND AS STEVIE WONDER WITHOUT)

I got out of the truck and my glasses instantly fogged up so sight was impossible. Was getting ready to take them off and clean them, when I hear someone yell, and see a shape running right towards me! I can't see at all with glasses on or off at this point, so a gun, pepper spray, or any aimed object would have been useless. It turned out to be a buddy of mine that I hadn't seen since boot camp, and he ran up to "rough me up".

We had a good laugh about it after, but it got me thinking. What if it had been a real threat? Not that I'm completely physically defensless mind you, but am pretty severely disabled, so blind and in a physical struggle for my life against an experienced man could be a bad thing......

I went out last week and got contact lenses. Over-reactive? Paranoid? My wife says so....but I feel better.....

Anyone else ever thought around these same lines?
 
I have the same thing happen with my glasses, I have a slight astigmatism, so I'm in an okay position vision wise if my glasses come off. One thing I have considered is corrective laser surgery so they only glasses I'll need will be :cool:

Have you considered laser correction?

MD
 
You can buy solutions for glasses that might help with the fogging up...

one I had was KleerVu? there are others on the market...

My problem is astigmatism/age

I cant see my sights clearly with my glasses on now. For CCW qualification I shot with them off to see the rear sights. works decent out to 15 yards.....

I fired 250 out of a possible 250.

I am starting to consider laser surgery but I want to do some more research on it.
 
I used to have eagle-vision, but around age 27 or so I discovered I needed corrective lenses for nearsightedness.

For the first year, I had a pair of glasses, but after that year I decided that for things like disc golf and surf kayaking, it would really serve me well to get contact lenses.

Now that I'm also a licensed pilot and skydiver, contact lenses serve me even better than they did already, since it's a lot easier to get decent goggles and sunglasses when they don't have to either go over glasses, or be prescription-lensed themselves.

Even if you didn't shoot, fly, play disc golf or skydive, you'd find it's worth having contact lenses if just for driving, or for rainy days when glasses will get covered in raindrops. That royally sucks. Stick with the contacts, allow yourself time to get used to them, and you'll really like having them. Eventually you will need rewetting eyedrops less and less, and putting the lenses in and taking them out will get much much easier. Trust and have faith, persevere, and it'll be worth it.

-blackmind
 
I have poor vision as well, have since fourth grade. I wear contact lenses now, and they seem like the best compromise short of laser surgery. One thing I want to do is look into overnight lenses, because I have to take out my lenses when I sleep.
One anti-fog product that comes to my mind is Cat Crap. I've never used it, but with a name like that it's got to be good. :D
 
I have had this pair in and out for about a week now, and the irratation is nearly gone. (The first pair was all silicone based overnight ones, and my eyes swelled shut from severe allergic reaction.) So I had to go with the 2 week disposables that you take out every night. And my right eye ended up needing something called a 'Toric' lens to correct my astigmatism, and they don't make an overnight toric lens yet. But its getting easier to get them in and out.

My mom has worn them for years and gave me some great advice. She said to put a towel completely over the bathroom sink/counter as you are learning to put them in and remove them. You WILL drop them, and they WILL disappear faster than a donut at a FOP picnic. If they fall on the towel you can usually find them. She was right, as I dropped both the left and right lenses TWICE this morning. (slippery little buggers)

The coolest thing though is now I can buy a pair of really cool looking cheapo sunglasses! :D Instead of the kind that clip over your glasses and make you look like Stevie Wonder. :D

And as far as firearms go, I got to shoot my .22 rifle without glasses for the 1st time EVER yesterday. It was awesome to be able to sight through the scope without glasses getting in the way! I can't wait till hunting season. I can actually wear a cammo face net now without my glasses fogging all up! And can play paintball (if my body will let me) without the facemask fogging all up!

Think I'm going to carry my glasses around in a hard case if I am out and about though, in case I lose a contact. That way I am not totally helpless/blind....

As far as the laser vision stuff, my eye doctor said I would be a perfect candidate for it, and would no doubt come out with better than 20/20 vision! (I never knew that was possible) But it is about 2-3 k for the surgery, and even on payment plans my meager monies won't allow that bill just yet. :(
 
I know that the cost on lasik keeps a lot of people from getting it done, but I can tell you from personal experience that if you ever decide to go that route, you'll never regret it. I had mine done just over a year ago and it was the best 3k I have ever spent. I wore glasses for right at 12 years (couldn't wear contacts) and have never been so happy to give someone so much of my money. One of the reasons I wanted to get it done was the fear of having to defend my home in the middle of the night and not being able to get to my gun AND glasses in a timely manner.
 
Wore glasses or contacts for 42 years, needed them for 10 years before I started wearing them. Contacts are great, up to a point. That point happens when you get a scratch on your cornea - you can find yourself out of commission for 2 to 3 days. Glasses are better than not being able to see, but have their problems. Contacts can become problematic in the rain, or on windy days, or if there is a lot of dust in the air.

I got lasik surgery a week ago - my only regret is that I didn't get it 42 years ago. I have better than 20/20 now and before I was so blind that I couldn't see anything 5 feet away, and what I could see was blurry. Now it is incredible. At my age though I have to wear reading glasses - same as I did with contacts.

I spent $3,600 for the best surgeon in town to do the best surgery available, and would consider 3 times that much a bargain for how clearly I see now. It is expensive, and it is worth it to the max.
 
I'll be doing the Lasik at some point, but I'm not a candidate yet because my prescrip is still changing a little bit year to year. SO I wear contacts for now and sometimes my glasses.

In order to get up in the middle of the night and head out to do my job, I don't have time to slide contacts in and glasses just don't fit under my SCBA mask. I wear my contacts 24 hours at a time even when I sleep on duty. But this type of lens is made for the 24 hour wear so its not that bad. Just a little dry in the morning.

I take them out for 24-48 hours straight every week to give my eyes a rest but I'm glad I have them in most fo the time besides that. I'm wide awake as soon as I jump up so " I pity the fool!" who decides to break into my house late at night! That BG certainly wont be facing a blind man! LOL!
 
One other thing I just thought of. Make a practice of carrying contact solution and a case in your glovebox along with a pair of glasses. I've lost count of the number of times I wanted to wash my contacts, but didn't have the fluid.
 
I got a good 27 years or so out of my eyes at realllllly good perfect vision. I mean, I could read stuff at distances you would not believe. I had "pilot's eyes."

They changed, over time, and back around 1998 I had to capitulate to corrective lenses. But I have always been reluctant to have anyone tamper with my eyes surgically. I am just not comfortable with the idea of that. I know several people who have had LASIK, and they describe the procedure and it squicks me out. I could probably get over that, as I am pretty mentally tough, and my tolerance to pain, even medical pain, is pretty darned high.

I just don't like the idea of my eyes being cut. And I don't know if I would heal correctly. My skin has always done the kind of scarring that you see clearly long after the wound is healed. I still show chicken pox scars, and I had that in 1982. I have no idea whether or not my eye tissue would heal poorly around a cut on them.

As I understand it, even eyes that have been corrected by LASIK can revert back to having imperfect vision some time later. Anyone know if they can keep doing LASIK over and over as time changes one's eyes again?

-blackmind
 
No pain with the Lasik.. I never felt any pain at all, during or after. I drove back to the drs office the next morning, less than 24 hours later. I didn't take even an aspirin.

I asked about changes - they told me that as long as your vision has stabilized it won't change. They can do lasik at least once more - the dr will do a follow up surgery if the first one doesn't get the best results. I don't know about over and over and over - but you should only need it once or maybe twice (tweaking) in your life. Or so they say.....

As for scarring, you put drops in your eyes for about a month that somehow or another keeps scarring from occurring.
 
How long does the surgery take? Some have said like a half hour in and out and you are WIDE AWAKE at the time? :eek:

That kinda weirds me out a bit....

I'm waiting for a small settlement from an accident. If I get enough I may just go for the LASIK. We supposedly have one of the BEST doctors in LASIK in the whole US here in Ohio....but he is 1k higher than anyone else....
 
For me, the actual surgery itself only took about 10 minutes, but the prep time and recovery time afterward added up to about an hour total. Yes, you are completely awake and yes it's VERY weird (especially the smell, dear god the smell), but it's well worth it.
 
BK,

How do you keep from closing your eyes and burning/cutting off your eyelids?

One of the reasons that I don't have contacts (now that they have ones for my problem in my left eye) is that if ANYTHING gets within two inches from my eyes, they slam shut.

The last time I went to the eye doc, the assistant had to literally pry my eyes open to get the drops in.

As for my eyesight, I can still "see" without my glasses well enough to protect myself/family. My left eye is the worse and I am right eye dominant.

Wayne
 
Actual surgery time on each eye is less than one minute total per eye. First you go through the flap removal procedure which is a laser operation also, at least it is with intralasik which is what I had, thats about 30 seconds per eye, then you go through the correction laser for about 30 seconds per eye also. The actual amount of time varies with the amount of correction required. My eyes were very very very bad, before.

From the time I arrived until the time I left to go home was about 3 1/2 hours though due to being in line with other patients and the pre-op procedures they do. The dr puts a suction ring on your eye that keeps the lid open and immobilizes the eye. You don't have to worry about moving or blinking or anything like that at all.

The lasik machine seems to me to be a CNC type of operation. The dr doesn't operate the laser like a hand held scalpel, it is all computerized and pre-programmed for your exact correction requirements. The machine reads/tracks the position of your eye something like 6000 times per second, and the whole machine is constantly tracking into adjustment with your eye in that manner, so even involuntary twitches won't cause a problem.

You are given a sedative before hand, so while you are definitely awake, you are very relaxed about the whole thing. It is not painful, not frightening, and certainly nothing to be apprehensive about.
 
Butch50 nailed it. The only differences on my side were no sedative (not offered, but would have been quickly accepted), and my flap was cut the old way instead of with laser. That part worried me the most, but with the way my cornea was shaped, they told me that was the best option for me.
 
I am an optician(make and sell eyeglasses). I can tell you that lots of my patients/clients have had very good results with lasik surgery! My business partner has also had it and she had great results. This is a great claim when speaking with patients, they appreciate her experience. I have seen quite a few patients who have had horrible results. We all hear so many good results and how much people love the vision afterward, but, when things don't go as expected.......watch out! It does happen. Not often, but not all results are rosey. Freinds and family were concerned that Lasik would put me out of business. Actually..it has helped to a degree. I have found that most patients still need minor corrections to sharpen night vision or reading glasses. If considering lasik=1.) seek the advice from a trusted eye doctor 2.)research severeal surgeons 3.)Don't believe the hype...most Dr.'s claim to be the "best in the area", with the "most advanced training" :rolleyes: 4.)Be prepared to still need eyewear for certain situations 5.) And last..be thankful that we live in a country where we have the skill and expertise of these well trained Dr.'s and surgeons, who have managed to survive the managed care and insurance anti-christ and be able to keep there practices afloat.

Sorry for the long reply!

Mr. Tettnanger
 
So they use some God-awful mechanical device to pry your eye open!?

Like those old sci-fi movies where they pried yer eyes open and made you watch stuff on a giant screen!? :eek:

I think that would freak me out to violence......not sure.....the thought of it has me shaken like a tweaker..... :D

I go to the appointment for the check procedures saturday. They have to do some type of checking/measuring to see what type of correction you need, ect. I'll let you know how it goes.....
 
Yeah, I hear that they pry your eyes open like in A Clockwork Orange, and they force you to watch video footage from New Orleans to make you hate black people. :p


RELAX, I'm just kidding.


Mr. Tettnanger, you got me thinking; I wonder how long a person has to wait in order to get LASIK treatment in Canada. Probably like five years. :rolleyes:


(I read an article about Canada's health care system that likened it to Cuba, because only those and like one other country in the world have actually outlawed private health care! As in, are not even allowed to pay for it on your own even if you CAN! Psycho!)


-blackmind
 
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