Eyeball pressure
I’ve had this funny spot in my vision for a couple days, and also I haven’t seen an optometrist in roughly ever, so I scheduled an appointment to have my peepers examined yesterday. I’m the only person of my age that I know who doesn’t wear any kind of corrective lenses, but recently things have been…not necessarily blurry, but definitely less well-focused than they were ten years ago. It was time.
I knew the basic drill from what my various friends and family reported, so I read off the letters and words and impressed the hell out of the technician by reading the bottom line of the close-up card without even squinting. Then Dr. Nguyen came in and we got down to Business. He put the big metal Mardi Gras mask in front of me and started twisting dials, checked for astigmatism, all that good stuff. Then he grabbed some eyedrops off the shelf, which I assumed were to dilate my eyes, but instead he said “These are a bit of anesthetic, they may sting a bit,” and quickly dropped them in before I could ask “what exactly are you about to do that might cause me pain?” which turned out to be an important unasked question.
Then he flipped off the lights and used another tool with a bright blue light to look at my eyes, and tossed off the following sentence like he was asking a waiter for an extra spoon: “I’m going to press this blue light against your eyeball. Open your eyes wide.”
You’re going to do what now?
Hey, uh, could you not, um…okay, bright blue light, getting closer, that’s close enough, OKAY PLEASE STOP PRESSING THE BLUE LIGHT AGAINST MY EYEBALL and he pulled it away.
“Now for the other one!”
Um…do we have to, uh…wait…wait…no…BRIGHT BLUE LIGHT AGAINST MY EYEBALL AGAIN TOTALLY NOT COOL and we were done.
“Ocular pressure’s totally normal.” Yeah, thanks for that.
Also thanks to everyone who had had this procedure done but didn’t warn me that SOLID OBJECTS WOULD BE PRESSING DIRECTLY AGAINST MY PUPILS. Awesome times.
After that, he did dilate my eyes, and to rule out a neurological reason for the funny spot in my vision, he had a technician do a peripheral vision test which I passed with flying colors. After my pupils were as big as pupils have any business getting, he shined a painfully bright light around my retinas for a while.
“Okay…first of all, your vision’s 20/15. You don’t need glasses.”
Just like Ted Williams!
“I do see a little scarring on your retina…” (Perhaps from the fact that you just shined an automobile headlight into my eyeball? Just throwing that out there.) “…but that’s normal.”
The funny spot is probably just the eyeball equivalent of a bruise, and will probably disappear soon. Yay! I don’t have eyeball cancer or syphilis or something!
“We’ll see you next year for another appointment!”
Great, ’cause it’ll take me that long to forget what it was like to have A BRIGHT BLUE LIGHT PRESSED AGAINST MY CORNEA.
