
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.