I had a delightful experience a couple of years ago, during which a young man (he looked all of 13 years old, but he did have a degree hanging on his office wall…….) told me that “now I have reached THAT age I need to wear glasses”. I don’t think he picked up on my death-glare, and thank goodness I don’t have lasers for eyes or he would have disappeared in a flash! FYI I will never reach THAT age, and I wanted to ring his mother and tell her that her son was very rude indeed! I had worn glasses for many years while working on my computer, but the unbearable headache meant that I would cave and wear a different set of glasses (yay, two prescriptions) all of the time. My teens both wear glasses all the time as they have done so for most of their lives, and, like them, they think it means that I am now blind without them. I catch them out doing all sorts of shenanigans when my glasses are off and they think they are safe: to their disappointment I have explained that I can see perfectly well without my glasses, I just have a horribly persistent headache if I don’t wear them all the time. The good news is that they do cover the bags under my eyes, so it’s not all bad : )

So, that is a long-winded background to an interesting review article I came across the other day, and it struck a chord with me as a glasses-wearer. Hoskin, Philip, Dain and Mackey conducted a review of the ocular trauma associated with wearing glasses, identifying a range of risk factors such as playing sports whilst wearing glasses. Their article published this month in the Clinical and Experimental Optometry Journal was an interesting read for me, particularly as I have found my glasses have protected me from injury.

Some background is probably needed here also…. I am known as an injury-prone person, and my eyes have proven just as vulnerable as the rest of my body. For example, I remember many a tumble on the trampoline as a child, and me crying inwardly (I had to show off in front of my brothers) that my knee always managed to find – and smash –  my eye socket. Fast forward to the days of endless-nappy-washing, and I am yet to meet another person who had a gum leaf slice the surface of their eye open while they were pegging the washing on the clothesline. Eye drops, impersonating a pirate for a couple of days, and a great excuse for not pegging out the washing any time soon. I am also pretty sure that eye-slashing gum leaves are not in any tourist brochures! My glasses have been protective, as they may have been that gusty day, such as preventing my whippet from giving me a black eye with the top of his head as he galloped around our acreage (I did end up with a glasses-shaped bruise around my eye and on my nose, however), and many a branch has scraped against the outside of the lens (better there than in my eye!). I have also had to scrape paint off their outer edge, suggesting I am not very talented with a roller. Having said that, I did have to be treated for an eye infection earlier this year after the sprinkler on our recycled water hose burst, sending a shower of recycled water (code: yucky water from our dishwasher, showers, and sinks) all over me, including the inside surface of my glasses and INSIDE my eye. Short of wearing goggles, though, I don’t think glasses would have helped prevent this latest injury.

Can anyone beat my gum-leaf eye injury?