There was a period in high school when I was really struggling.
It wasn't because of my grades, nor because of my social connections—it was my eyes.
I have amblyopia in one eye: my right eye is nearsighted by 250 degrees, and my left eye has amblyopia combined with hyperopia, which is about 300 degrees. When I went to get my glasses back then, the optician asked me for the prescription, but I didn’t know what to say, so I just went with the results of the eye exam. When I put the glasses on, I felt dizzy, and it was actually harder to see things than when I wasn’t wearing them.
I thought it was just a adjustment period, so I kept pushing through.
I've been holding on for a long time, but I'm still dizzy.
Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I just stopped wearing them. Every day in class, I’d sit in the front row, craning my neck forward and staring intently at the blackboard. The moment I let my guard down, the words would blur into a smudge. It wasn’t just that I “couldn’t see clearly”; it was that when I forced myself to focus, my whole head would feel swollen, as if something were pushing against the inside.
Back then, I didn’t know what was going on, and I didn’t know who to ask.
I went to see a doctor.
The doctor was very straightforward; basically, he said that once you get older, there’s not much that can be done about amblyopia—it mainly comes down to not having treated it when you were younger.
I was 18 at the time, just starting my junior year of high school, when I was diagnosed with amblyopia in one eye for the first time. I took the doctor’s words to mean that this was how my life would be from then on.
I accepted that explanation, but I still felt a bit of a lump in my throat.
It wasn’t until several years later, after I switched doctors, that I finally got to the bottom of it.
At that follow-up appointment, the doctor prescribed a slightly lower prescription than before. After putting them on, I noticed that the dizziness had significantly subsided, and it wasn’t as hard to see things anymore.
I just realized that the problem wasn't the amblyopia itself; it was that my prescription was too strong.
The process of prescribing glasses for amblyopia differs from that for ordinary myopia; you cannot simply prescribe the full correction based on the test results. If the prescription is too strong, the eyes won’t be able to adjust, and you’ll end up feeling dizzy all the time.
Later, I started working on content related to amblyopia, mainly with the goal of creating a website for adults with amblyopia.
It’s not because I’ve studied it so deeply, but because I am that person.
I know how difficult it is for people with amblyopia to find information. Most of what they find is either aimed at parents (on how to treat their children) or hospital advertisements (which aren’t cheap); there’s very little content actually written for adult amblyopia patients themselves.
Not to mention that someone might tell you: pay attention to what matters when getting your glasses fitted; dizziness isn’t necessarily a sign of amblyopia—it might just be that the prescriptions aren’t properly matched.
I figured all this out on my own, bit by bit, and took quite a few detours along the way.
I’m not writing this to draw any grand conclusions; I just want to say one thing:
If you have amblyopia as an adult and feel dizzy when wearing glasses, don’t jump to the conclusion that “amblyopia is incurable.”
See an ophthalmologist or optometrist who specializes in amblyopia testing and have your eyes re-examined thoroughly. The process of prescribing glasses for an amblyopic eye is different from that for ordinary myopia.
I didn't know about this back then, so I just kept pushing through for several years.
I hope you don’t have to go through this again.
