Vuity Review: I traded in my reading glasses for magic eye drops
I felt two flashes of irritation and concern, then a thunderclap of revelation: I was reading my texts without my glasses! In a dark car! I could see the full range of emojis, right down to the stripes on the zebra and holes in the Swiss cheese.
It wasn't exactly the moment the velvet bunny realized he was real, but it still felt significant.
That evening, in the bright warmth of our dining room, I noticed my texts were blurry again. I knew the drops wear off within a few hours and you can only use them once a day. But I still held my phone, then a book, at arm's length, and tightened my double chin because I didn't want to succumb to the glasses. I felt like Charlie in Flowers for Algernon and slowly reverted to my old self.
To make matters worse, the whites of my eyes had a pink cast. Imagine Campbell's tomato soup when you add an extra can of milk. My 20-year-old daughter assured me I didn't look overdone: "But your bags are bigger than usual," she said.
The next morning I applied the drops right after waking up. This time I waited the recommended 10 minutes before entering my contacts. I hadn't been able to read the microscopic instructions on the first pass, so I missed that detail. For someone as short-sighted as I am (my lens prescription is -9.50 in each eye), with outdated regular glasses, that extra time would have been worth it if Vuity had worked as promised. It didn't.
Not only did my eyes retain their bloodshot, rheumatic glow during the five days I took the drops, but my near vision never improved significantly enough to make reading glasses unnecessary. The drops also burned when entering. I'm not talking about a searing pain, more like a whiplash in the eye but still uncomfortable.
Vuity came in handy when I was taking Fig for a walk within hours of taking a dose. I could stop on a corner, look at my phone, and make sense of what I was seeing without rummaging in my pocket for glasses that would fog up the moment they touched my skin.
