The eye test
Me and the medical profession don’t generally get along. I blame this entirely on all the arrogant, boozy, snorting and downright weird student doctors, opticians, dentists and psychologists that I was unfortunate enough to know at university. Ever since then, I’ve been suspicious of any medical practitioner who for example, leaves the room or even looks in a desk drawer during my consultation – I just know that they’re anxiously looking through crib notes because they can’t remember the proper name or symptoms of the particular problem I’m describing.*
My least favourite routine medical examination is having my eyes tested. Now I’ve worn glasses since I was 10, I have had a lot of eye tests in my time and I should be used to the procedure. It is not embarrassing, intrusive or even boring. People have phobias of dentists, no one has issues with opticians.
No, the problem is that it is an exam, a series of questions which you need to get right or else you are stuck with the wrong prescription – which will ruin your eyes, give you terrible, terrible headaches and destroy your life for ever more. Well, that’s what’s going through my head anyway.
So for me, the eye test is pure nerves driven adversarial combat.
Before the test even begins, I am on the defensive. In that semi-dark room with my glasses off, I am in a state of pitiful weakness - I can’t even see the eye chart, let alone the letters on it. Secondly, I am wearing the weirdo test goggles which make you look a mad Victorian spectacle inventor.
Then the grilling starts:
‘Can you read the fifth line of letters on the chart in front of you?’
Of course I bloody well can’t, you’ve got my glasses and you’re making me look through this stupid thing which clearly doesn’t have any proper lenses in it.
‘Aha, didn’t think you could! But don’t worry, let’s put some lenses in. Now which one of these two images looks clearer? Number one or two?’
Ok, starting off easy. Number one is definitely clearer.
‘How about this one?’
Two. I think…
‘And this?’
One, or…. maybe two, actually. Yes, two.
‘And this. One or two?’
Errr… they seem similar. Maybe number two…
‘Are you sure?’
So it’s not two then? Mild panic.
‘How about this? Which is better? One or two?’
Two? No, what did I say last time? Is it one? Can you show me them again?
‘Yes, of course. One, two, one.’
They look the same. How can that be right?!
‘Ok, let’s go back to the first chart I showed you. Can you read the fifth line of letters now?’
Yes, but what’s that second row of tiny, tiny letters I can now see underneath? Should I be able to read that? Who can read that? Superman?
Thank God it’s over for another two years.
* This is based on an anecdote from a final year med student I knew in 1994 who, when complaining to his lecturer that it was all very well cramming for exams but how would he remember it in the surgery, was informed me that he should keep a set of medical encyclopaedias in the anteroom to his office that he could sneak out and read under the pretext of washing his hands. The lecturer probably thought that this was a particularly hilarious joke.
Tags: mindless minutiae, woe is me
July 6th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
and you’re not even colour blind i get all confused by the red and green lights and then chossing a paper for my weird face and paying for the things
July 6th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Eh, BLTP? Do you mean choosing glasses?
I didn’t even go into frames – THAT’s a whole other issue. Choosing the damn things when you can’t see them anyway and then paying an obscene amount for the privilege (when people can get gastric bands on the NHS)…
July 6th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
It’s that one moment. You know the one? Where they blow that little puff of air into into your eyeball and it makes you jump out of your skin. I THINK there’s no reason for that, they just do it so your in a fragile state when the robbing dispensing opticians take over, and relieve you of the content of your wallet.
July 6th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
sorry i can’t type “choosing a frame” but yes the whole thing is weird
July 6th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
It is, VS, an alleged test for glaucoma. I know because after years of barely tolerating this torture, I finally asked.
But I don’t believe him. Your reasoning is much, much more feasible.
July 7th, 2009 at 9:07 am
I get unnerved by having someone’s face that close to my own (someone I don’t know, I mean. I’m fine with my husband, and certain close friends.).
And whaddaya mean, psychologists are weird?? I’m normal, me. Oh yes.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I’m currently in dispute with my optician about my wrong prescription. I’m convinced it’s wrong, they say not. But my thinking is that I should know what’s right for my eyes. Am I being unreasonable.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Luckily my eyes have always been trouble free *touches wood* Mrs M has terrible probs though..including ‘floaters’ and ‘light flashe’s not quite retinal detachment but a variation
July 7th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Perhaps I’m overdue for an eye test given my fumble-fingered replies, which go unnoticed until posting
July 7th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I’m sure you’re normal now ISBW, but were you always? Particularly when you were a student (hanging out with the Higsons if I recall correctly?)
FC, that is very weird. Do you think that your prescription is very wrong, or just a bit out? And how can that be? They’re meant to be the experts!
Bloody hell PM, that’s awful for Mrs M – that would scare me into going to the opticians pronto.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
She’s a regular at Specsavers – the floaters (which are the inside of the eye degrading apparently) are like cobwebs across her vision not bad in built up areas but awful outdoors open sea and sky..and without her contacts she has to literally hold a magazine up against the end of her nose to read the headlines..
July 7th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I’ve regularly joked about the fact that when I was growing up, I had an optician who was a terrifying, mad old bag. She’d bark questions at me if I didn’t get them right first time, had wild hair, stank of stale body odour and wore a moth-eaten grey cardigan. Ever since then I’ve had a succession of slightly mad optometrists who, whilst not unpleasant, did frequently give the impression they were orbiting Mars.
However, no sooner did I start joking about this than I got a new optometrist who is really… well.. how can I put this… incredibly attractive and charming. This doesn’t feel any more comfortable, strangely. As soon as she turns the lights out and “makes things all blurry”, and starts breathing and gently talking down my ear, I can barely put my contact lenses in straight afterwards. And last time I went to see her, I genuinely couldn’t, either… I suppose the moral of this tale is to be careful what you wish for.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
PM, sounds worse the more you write about it. The inside of the eye degrading?! I hope she hasn’t had this for too long and that it won’t get worse over time.
Ah Dave, there is definitely a moral to that story! Although I know which situation is probably the nicer to be in.
And it’s nice to know that there are so many people with impoverished eyesight reading this blog. Makes me feel better somehow. Anyone can’t drive as well then….?
July 7th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
I can’t drive! This has nothing to do with my eyesight which, whilst terrible, isn’t quite terrible enough to have those kinds of restrictions placed on me.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
As someone who had lovely eyes until 18 months ago, the opticians is somewhere I have seen way too often since then. I never minded them, but now I find them depressing and a remindeer of how my eyes (or I should say, one of my eyes) was ruined in a few short seconds… Ugh, life….
Look after ya peepers people…
P
July 8th, 2009 at 9:59 am
No, my eyesight isn’t that bad either Dave, I just don’t drive. Which has both positives and negatives…
That sounds very ominous Piley. Ruined in a few short seconds? Is it ok? Can you see with that eye?
July 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Nah, you’re right – I’ve never been normal. But normality’s for squares, and me, I’m a hepcat, Daddyo. I don’t even NEED these glasses!
*bodyswerves ‘Higsons’ question*
July 8th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Great post. You definitely are reminding me of how much I hate going to the doctor. It drives me crazy to get eye exams. I’ve worn glasses since I was a kid.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Glad you enjoyed the post Keith – and even better that I have another specs wearing reader. Goggle wearers of the world unite!
July 8th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
a long story and all a bit of an ongoing living nightmare really…
i’ve had a cataract in one eye for some time, in 2008 I was advised by the optician (wrongly as it turned out) to have it done. My sight is now shit in that eye, and a million times worse than before i had it done.
I guess you know that what you get when you have the lens replaced is a ‘fixed’ lens… the zoom type bit don’t work anymore. So my left eye is set at a permanent focus… at least it should have been, its not focused on ANY level, and everything is blurred to varying degrees. The least out is long distance which is 0.5 ‘out’ compared to my good eye. Middle vision is 1.50 out compared to my other eye, and close up is the worst, I can’t see anything at all now and it’s out by 2.75… I now have two eyes with completely different focus, which is, frankly, a misery. I don’t get on well with varifocals, so am continually ’swapping’ glasses. I drop a ‘middle’ vision contact in on my bad eye and that’s the best i can do, so long vision is blurred as is close vision… i have to put glasses on top of the contact to read or drive.
It’s very disorientating, I can almost get away without glasses for long vision (although it will give me a headache in the end), but of course, when you are walking about, things that are ‘long’ eventually get nearer!! So the nearer things get the more blurred they get…
wish you hadn’t asked??!!
P
July 8th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Oh boy, Piley, tales like that make me feel very bad about wingeing about my eye sight and trips to the optician. At least glasses fix the problem! I really don’t know what so say – I know how absoutely frustrating it is when my eyesight suddenly deteriorates, I can’t see in the distance so well (or close-up for that matter!) and my prescription needs changing, but cannot possibly imagine what it would be like to have that constantly being a problem AND at different distances.
I guess a consoling thought (and probably for all the people commenting on this) is that having bad eyesight is much better than having hearing problems. I honestly think I’d be suicidal if I had a life without music.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Thanks… I guess what makes this hard for me is I had fab eyes for 40 years… all taken for granted, then WHAM! my left eye ages approx 30 years in a few minutes. My actual eye was (and still is) very good and very strong… it’s just the lens that’s rubbish. It was described to me like this… say you bought a million pound camera, and then bought the lens from the pound shop… the pictures are still gonna be crap…
I’m told that by the time i’m 65/70, my good eye is likely to be similar to my bad eye, which is little consolation really!
July 8th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
I assume it’s not easily fixed then, otherwise 70-year olds would all have perfect vision.
Yours and Mrs Mondo’s tales are worrying but well-worth hearing. We get told in disability/accessibility training regularly that a very high percentage of the population have some kind of visual impairment (i.e. one that cannot be corrected by just wearing a single pair of glassses) and well, this just brings it home. Thanks for sharing.