Had my usual yearly visit to the Optometrist for new contact lenses; and since I am getting old & grey, and since diabetes runs in my family, it made sense to get checked for glaucoma & other ocular nasties.
The test for glaucoma involved gauging the pressure within the eyeball; so the Optometrist forwarned me that he would anesthetize my eyes with eyedrops and then touch them with a tonometer.* The next step was to check for other diseases using the slit-lamp examination, in which the Optometrist dilated my pupils with yet more drops and then shone a beam of light into my eyes in order to peer around inside.
Couldn't help but think how much it was like a dental appointment, in the sense of {1} he kept saying, can you open wider, please? when I thought I was at my limit, and {2} it was like that old Cosby routine ** ~~ everybody knows you're not supposed to put things in your eyes or stare into lasers & suchlike, and here I am, thingys being pinged off my eyeballs and gazillions of photons being rammed down the thoats of my peepers.
As it turns out, my eyes are fine. But the Optometrist warned me that due to the eyedrops I might have some trouble reading for some time afterwards, a warning which I did not take to heart {see footnote #1}; and I'm sure I looked a right fool in the grocery store an hour later, holding out packages far and near and far again, trying to figure out what was written on the labels and the price tags. :)
Can't wait for the new contact lenses to show up; it feels like I'm wearing day~old worn~out underwear on my eyes...
~ ~ ~
* I was suprised to discover that one's eyes can be anesthetized, but ~ forehead slap ~ of course, they are of muscle & tissue like the rest of the body.
This is an example of when learning makes you feel stupid; i.e., when you realise you ought to have known it all along, so instead of feeling just a wee bit smarter for having made a new synaptic connection you're suddenly painfully aware of how excruciatingly dense your grey matter is on a normal day.
** "DENTISTS. [pause] Will tell you. NOT. To SCRAPE. Your teeth. With any. Sharp... Metal... Object... [pause] And then you get into their chair. And the first thing they go for. Is an Iron Hook."
PostScript:
The inability to focus due to the anesthesia & dilation would be akin to the bit where Cosby says,
"Riblblblnse? Yblou blwablnt blme tblo riblblblnse? Hoblblw cablbln blI riblblblnse? blI hablblblve blno blbottoblm lblblip!"
"blI hopebl thblat blyou are blsatblisblied..."
Posted by edgar at October 27, 2003 09:19 AM