|
What the practitioner
says... |
What it means... |
| You are an emmetrope. |
No insult intended. In fact, being labeled at
emmetrope is good news. It means there is nothing wrong with
the parts of your eye that bend, or refract, light to create
clear vision. And that, in turn, means you probably do not
need contact lenses or eyeglasses. |
| You have ametropia. |
Don’t panic. It isn’t as bad as it sounds.
With ametropia, you have a condition with the parts of your
eye that bend light to create clear vision. Generally,
ametropes can be fitted with glasses or contact lenses to gain
clear vision. Myopia, hypermetropia, astigmatism and
presbyopia are types of ametropia. |
| You are "myopic". |
Don’t worry, your eye care practitioner is
referring only to your vision, not your beliefs. If you have
myopia, you would have difficulty seeing the blackboard from
the back of a classroom or reading road signs at a distance.
Some call it nearsightedness; others shortsightedness. In any
case, myopia can usually be corrected with contact lenses or
glasses. |
| You are "hypermetropic". |
Don’t worry. Your practitioner doesn’t know
you ate three candy bars just before your appointment.
Hypermetropia, also known as farsightedness, longsightedness
or hyperopia, is a condition that makes close up objects
appear blurred or unclear. Hypermetropia is correctable with
eyeglasses or contact lenses. |
| You have "presbyopia". |
It’s your eye practitioner’s way of telling
you gently that you’re getting older. Presbyopia, derived from
Greek words meaning "old eye," refers to the vision condition
that affects many people in middle age. Words in books and
newspapers become blurred when held at normal distance, but
pushed farther away, they become clear. Seeing to do close-up
work becomes difficult. Reading glasses or contact lenses can
be fitted to correct presbyopia. |
| You are "astigmatic". |
In other words, you have astigmatism, a
condition in which the cornea of your eye -- its clear front
window -- is irregularly shaped, causing vision to be clearly
focused along one axis of sight, but blurred along the other.
Your eye care practitioner can prescribe corrective eyewear
for astigmatism. |
| You are suffering from
asthenopia. |
Your eyes are tired or uncomfortable from
working too long in the wrong sort of light or from wearing an
inappropriate contact lens or eyeglass prescription, one that
is not correcting a refractive defect (a defect in your eye’s
ability to bend light). |
| You have "diplopia". |
That’s the technical term for double vision.
Your eyes may not be seeing the same object at once and your
brain is unable to "fuse" two images into one. Thus, you see
two dissimiliar images, one superimposed on top of the
other. |
| You have strabismus ,
or You have squint. |
Your eyes are not looking at the same thing
simultaneously. When this first happens, you may get diplopia,
or double vision. After a while, the brain may be overcome by
the resulting discomfort and begin suppressing the image from
one eye in order to get a single image again. If this happens
in a young child, vision in the "suppressed" eye can be
permanently impaired. If treated early in life, the outcome is
generally positive. |
| I recommend "monovision"
. |
No, your practitioner is not suggesting that
you stumble through life with just one eye. Monovision
describes a method of correcting presbyopia (see above)
in which one contact lens is prescribed for distance vision
and the other for close-up work. |
