My recent eye exam resulted in new glasses and, yes, as usual, I was startled to see the immediate difference in clarity for much of my field of vision. The biggest single difference I noticed, though, was the shading provided in direct sunlight from the transitions (photochromic or adaptive) lenses.
Yes, I’m late to the game on those and that would seem counter-intuitive if you knew me as a kid.
See, more than a few photos of me as a kid show me grimacing as if in pain. Well, I was. I have a pronounced hypersensitivity to sunlight that has plagued me all my life.
Bright days could be sheer torture sometimes. I would walk around, closing one eye with a finger because it hurt. I learned to navigate on bad days by taking my bearings briefly with one eye open, then taking a few steps before risking opening it again.
Sunlight practically blinded me on bright days when this condition got aggravated by my many allergies. The worst allergy was to chocolate. Chocolate, of all things — every kids’ favorite taste and deepest desire. Except for me. If I made the mistake of eating chocolate one day, I would be practically blind the next. This heightened sensitivity to sunlight fascinated my allergist since he’d never encountered such a strange symptom, leading him to share my case with colleagues overseas.
The problem was bad enough, that by the time I was 10, my eye doctor recommended I wear sunglasses whenever I went outside. Two big problems there: 1) we weren’t about to buy prescription sunglasses so I had to use flip-up shades, and 2) in 1965, it was just not cool to wear sunglasses in 5th grade. I stopped wearing them by 6th grade and just suffered when I had to.
So when the first transition lenses came along, promising to darken in sunlight to shade your eyes, I couldn’t wait. Until they explained that due to the thickness of my lenses, the darkening effect would essentially give me tunnel vision in sunlight. By that time, my hypersensitivity wasn’t quite as drastic and happened less frequently as I mostly outgrew my allergies, so I was mostly used to the worst of it.
When ordering these new glasses, however, they once again suggested I consider them, pointing out they had improved markedly. I figured I was starting with a new eye doctor, had tried their new dilation-free exam procedure, and might as well make the jump into the “modern” world of adaptive lenses.
Sure enough, these are fantastic. They are subtle enough from my side of the glasses that I hardly noticed the effect at first — until I realized I was not even mildly squinting in the sunshine. While I had certainly gotten used to doing that all my life, I could feel the relief of not straining even that little bit.
I like it — and now, I’ve got it made in the shade, even in direct sunlight!
Buller's back porch 