Eye Drops Prevent Nearsightedness

I am a high grade myopic. I’m so nearsighted that I can’t even count how many fingers  someone is holding up across the room (the crudest eye test out there) without my glasses.

It started when I was in second grade and my teachers and my parents didn’t believe me for the longest time when I asked to sit closer to the blackboard - because that’s where my best friend sat. He was placed there because he was a little hyper, and I was put in the back of the room because I was so well behaved.

I still remember my annual visits to the elderly ophthalmologist I saw. Every year he sighed when he prescribed stronger and stronger glasses for me.

I just read an article about how atropine eyedrops every night reduced the 2 year risk of developing nearsightedness in children aged 4 to 9 from 53% to 28%. That is the age where, if nearsightedness starts to develop, it just about invariably leads to the kind of severity I am living with. Finding a preventive strategy at this age is important, the authors write, because “Early onset of myopia is associated with high myopia later in life, and myopia is irreversible once developed”.

My glasses are definitely a part of who I am and I have already decided that if I end up with cataract surgery I want my implanted lenses to keep me wearing glasses, not just for reading but all the time. But, it would be nice to see well enough without my glasses that I have a better chance of finding them with my bare eyes.

In 2008, my first year of blogging, I published a post titled Altered Vision. It describes my experience having and self diagnosing a vitreous detachment while visiting family in Sweden. Because of my nearsightedness I developed a special interest in ophthalmology, but I was afraid that my steadily worsening eyesight would possibly make it hard for me to practice that specialty into my old age. That fact and my general curiosity about all things medical made me choose primary care instead.