Saturday, December 31, 2011

Brain adjustment

I knew that my brain had adjusted to my glasses, which were progressive bifocals I wore all the time, so there would be a period of adjustment to my new vision.  The surprise is that my close vision keeps getting better as my eyes adjust.  I keep going back to Dollar General and buying weaker reading glasses.  I started out with +2.50 but now I'm finding +2.00 stronger than I want for reading or writing with my book or pad on my lap.  For my laptop I am now happy with +1.50 instead of +1.75.  I'll keep a pair of +2.50 for close work such as sewing.

I took a walk today with my kids and found that I had a bit of movement of the road as my head moved with my stride.  I don't know if that is a brain adjustment to glasses with progressive lenses that I am unlearning or possibly a little distortion in my lenses (which are not aspheric).  I'm confident my brain will adjust and filter it out.

I was warned when I got progressive lenses that they were hard to get used to.  What no one warned me is that it is just as hard to adjust back to not having them.  My brain had compensated for the progressive lenses to give me an accurate sense of the position of steps and the like.  So without them, my brain at first gave me the wrong information about where to put my feet (making a correction that was no longer needed).

Posts in this series (reverse chronological order):
Eye Surgery Follow-up
Brain Adjustment
Second Vision Correction Surgery
The Week Between Surgeries
Day after Surgery
First Surgery
Refractive Lens Exchange

1 comment:

Arlene - Caregiver ordinaire said...

Hi Pem,
I haven't had a chance to read your whole blog, but want you to know that I'm in the internet world and writing also about caring for someone with Lewy Body. My Momma was diagnosed about 2.5 years ago and she is much farther along than your husband, John. Thank you for posting the pretty pic of the lake - it looks like such a peaceful spot! I am always interested in other Caregiver Journeys. I am sorry that you are going through this Lewy process. I think this is a perfect place to vent and a perfect place to find support. You are in my thoughts. would you mind if I posted a link in my blog to yours? My blog is MommaNMe.blogspot.com