The 'Monocle' Blog
We share our knowledge of the finest brands from across the globe, and the latest in modern eye care.
What happened? My eyes used to be perfect.
Laser eye surgery, am I eligible and what's new?
Let's talk about macular degeneration.
What is glaucoma and what's new?
Let's talk about myopia!
Your world is about to get a whole lot clearer.
Goodbye 2020! Wow, year one done! It's been a heck of a ride, but truthfully, it actually came and went pretty quickly! Everything we had aspired to create finally came to fruition on February 29, 2020 when we first opened our door to the public. All of the planning, designing, researching and anticipation came to a hush as that door swung open to give Monocle its first breath of fresh air. We didn't know who was going to step foot in our practice, but that's half the fun! From that day, we saw new faces as well as familiar ones, and we are beyond thankful for everyone that has graced Monocle with their presence. However, one month later came Covid-19, and with heavy hearts we were forced to close that very same door which we had worked so hard to open.
Stigma? Stigmata? No no. Astigmatism . Everyone’s heard about astigmatism, but what actually is it? Well, once it's differentiated from its other misnomers, we can learn a bit about it! Astigmatism isn’t a scary disease, it's actually quite common! It refers to how light bends when it comes into the eye. Because the eye is generally a spherical shaped structure, if it’s not perfectly spherical, then light scatters when it comes into the eye. This leads to starburst effect on lights and shadowing of objects in our vision (sound familiar?). In a nutshell, this is astigmatism! Astigmatism comes from two structures in the eye: The cornea – the front surface of the eye. If this is a bit steeper along one meridian, then we’d call it corneal astigmatism . Some people have been told their eyes are shaped like a rugby ball rather than soccer ball, which is certainly one way to think about it! The lens – housed inside the eye is a lens that does a lot of our focussing. This too can have an unequal curvature to it which can scatter light. We call this lenticular astigmatism .
We hear it all the time: “I’ve been told I can’t wear contact lenses” or “I wear multifocal glasses, so I don’t think contact lenses are for me” and “I can’t wear contacts because of my astigmatism”. We’ve heard it so much it makes our eyes roll (pun intended). However, the truth is that there is a contact lens for nearly everyone!
When we finally saw our North Fremantle clinic completed, we were humbled by how great it looked! However, it took a lot of hard work from some very special people in order to get to that stage, and we’d like to share that journey with you.