Eye opener

Ever since that whole cancer thing a few years ago, I've a tendency to be a bit anxious about the various small, unexplained pains and anatomical anomalies that we all experience from time to time. Lately, the focus of my hypochondria has been my eyes.

No pun intended.

I'm extremely nearsighted*, and the last time I went to an optometrist he informed me that, as a consequence of this, my eye pressure was quite high and should be closely watched. He said that if I ever felt any shooting pains in my eyes, I should immediately go to the nearest optometrist as this was a sign that my retinas were separating from my eyeballs. Further, he stressed the importance of coming in for a checkup at least once a year.

That was over three years ago, so when I started occasionally getting short, sharp pains in my eyes, I started thinking about finally getting around to finding a new eye doctor to go with our new town. And yet I kept putting if off, because the word "glaucoma" had got pretty firmly lodged in the back of my mind and I didn't want to risk having that confirmed before Turtle's and my big vacation.

Not knowing about any of this, Turtle scheduled me an appointment with an opthalmologist.

So I went, remembering that the last time I went to an actual eye doctor—as opposed to a vendor of prescriptive lenses with a license to prescribe them—I passed out. Something about the whole process of numbing and dilating the eyes and pressing some sort of sci-fi blue light against my eyeballs makes me squeamish. When I get squeamish, my blood pressure drops (and so do I).

When I arrived at the doctor's office, I warned them of my swoonish tendencies. They told me to warn the doctor when I was called in for my exam. I told the doctor. The doctor told me to try not to hit my head if I passed out.

What a stitch, this guy. [click-click. BOOM!]

A couple things happened, and one didn't. I learned that my previous eye "doctor" should have been selling shoes, because I do not have glaucoma or even high eye pressure. I also learned that because of the shape of my eyeball cup (or something), my risk of ever having those problems was minute.

And I didn't pass out from the pressure test.

But wait! Having got my pressure test out of the way, I still had to go through the whole dilation process, at which point I learned something else that's useful to know: it's the sensation of my pupils dilating that makes me queasy, not the blue light. Seated safely in the staging area, I put my head between my knees and fought through it without incident.

It would have been really embarrassing if I'd passed out in front of the elderly lady with the drool running down her chin.

Finally, I was finished and, much relieved about the results of my checkup, I ventured outside and gave thanks to my Maker that my appointment had been scheduled on a very cloudy day. Though I was squinting even with my sunglasses on, I decided it wouldn't hurt anything to stop by the bike shop to pick up a few tubes (since I'd given away my spare).

At the bike shop, I had great fun showing my freaky eyes to a couple of the staffers with whom I've become friends.

"Holy crap," one of them said. "They're all black! You look like that one guy from Carnivàle. Or... or..."

"One of the tar alien-infected characters from The X-files?"

"Yeah. Or like that."

Unfortunately, half an hour was plenty of time for my luck to run out. By the time I left, it was a beautiful, horrible sunny day out.

Oh yeah... and I need bifocals.


* There is a space of about two inches, about six inches from my eyes, within which I can see clearly without corrective lenses. We're talking somewhere north of 20/1200. Yet every time I go to an eye doctor, he or she confiscates my glasses and asks me to read the chart waaaaaayyy down at the far end of the room.

"Can you read any of that, Mr. Mafoo?"

"Gee, I don't know," I say, not at all sarcastically. "Can you give me a hint? Like, say, turning my head generally in the direction of whatever it is I'm supposed to be reading?"