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scotch
10-14-08, 02:03 PM
Hi, I am wondering what marines do for vision problems when they are in combat. Such as, if you require glasses to see things far away, do you just where glasses, contacts, or would it be best to get your vision corrected with laser eye surgery.

Pete0331
10-14-08, 02:07 PM
Hi, I am wondering what marines do for vision problems when they are in combat. Such as, if you require glasses to see things far away, do you just where glasses, contacts, or would it be best to get your vision corrected with laser eye surgery.

Glasses: Yes
Contacts: No
Surgery: Sometimes

Pete

Echo_Four_Bravo
10-14-08, 02:09 PM
Contacts are a no-no when things look ugly. Chemical attacks and contacts aren't something you want to combine.

Glasses are pretty common. Laser eye surgery is an option (don't do it before you enlist) but unless you have some phobia about wearing glasses when you're surrounded by men I don't really see that it is all that important. The only exception would be one of the jobs that demand great vision.

scotch
10-14-08, 02:14 PM
Thanks guys, that answers my question perfectly.

0231Marine
10-14-08, 02:14 PM
You can get prescription balistic sun glasses if you're going outside the wire. Any other time, you can just wear your regular glasses.

scotch
10-14-08, 02:16 PM
Ballistic sun glasses? What are those.

Pete0331
10-14-08, 02:19 PM
Ballistic sun glasses? What are those.

Seriously?

0231Marine
10-14-08, 02:32 PM
Ballistic sun glasses? What are those.

http://www.google.com/

0231Marine
10-14-08, 02:34 PM
Seriously?

Once again proving that there are no such things as stupid questions.

Only stupid people who ask questions.

Quinbo
10-14-08, 04:05 PM
They make this thing what we called a brain strap. It is a pair of glasses with no frame, kinda sorta like a pair of swim goggles. You could hit and roll all day in them without having to push them back up your nose or pick them up off the ground. They were only allowed in the field when I was in.

bigdog43701
10-14-08, 07:03 PM
check out Revision Eyewear....ballistic and withstand a shotgun blast

Echo_Four_Bravo
10-14-08, 09:56 PM
Whether they're going to be issued to you or not, skip the heartache and buy some ESS ICE shooting glasses with Rx inserts. Go to the local glasses shop, pay $50 or so and get some lenses for the inserts. You'll be good to go in just about any situation, and it won't cost you all that much.

Diep
10-15-08, 02:05 AM
Whether they're going to be issued to you or not, skip the heartache and buy some ESS ICE shooting glasses with Rx inserts. Go to the local glasses shop, pay $50 or so and get some lenses for the inserts. You'll be good to go in just about any situation, and it won't cost you all that much.


I'm with you on that one. I love my ess inserts but saddly I wound up loosing them last week and now I can't find them. I'm gonna be screwed if I have to shoot at anything any time soon out here. LOL

Accord
10-15-08, 04:21 AM
GET LASIK! I cannot stress this enough.

I have horrible vision and can't tell a horses ass from it's nose without my glasses. If you're going to Iraq what i'm about to say won't matter because you'll be living in a nice FOB and whatnot and going back to a nice base with a real med center and BAS after every patrol, but if you're going to Afghanistan where you'll find yourself living out of your gun trucks or living out of small captured Taliban compounds with the nearest BAS or med center being 40 clicks away if you're lucky then you need to get LASIK.

ESS ICE glasses with RX inserts don't hold up under the rigors of combat, having the RX inserts creating the small gap between the ballistic plastic combined with the humidity of southern Afghanistan will cause them to fog up on every single patrol, in other words - they suck not to mention they have so many little parts that snap on and off that during a combat deployment you're going to lose **** and have to improvise, not to mention they break easily. I had prescription Oakley M-Frames for my whole deployment and they were pretty good but they'll still break, just not as easily as ESS glasses. The Oakley's were well worth the money, but NOTHING is better than getting LASIK. Night patrols absolutely sucked having to wear my clear Oakley RX M-Frames as a barrier between my eyes and my NVG's which were next to impossible to clearly focus them.

When I broke my M-Frames, it was a solid month before I could get them replaced because by the time my platoon got access to a sattelite phone and the time it takes to ship them from America, and then the time it takes to actually get the mail to the front lines, you're looking at more than 4 weeks.

If your unit won't get you on the list for LASIK or won't get you LASIK before you deploy, then go out in town and get it done at a civilian LASIK eye clinic and spend the $3,000 or so that it costs. It's mission essential and I cannot go another deployment with RX glasses. I come home in a few weeks and the second I get back i'm scheduling a pre-op screening for LASIK and if I get put at the end of the list i'm just going to get it done at a civilian doc.