Why I am a Moron...Part 1

Part 1...because there are oh so many moronic parts to my life :)

So...I'm terrible about taking care of my health issues. Those who know me well know this about me. Good at taking care of the kids, bad at taking care of myself. This episode involves me being a moron about my vision health.

I have bad vision and have since high school. However, the last time I had an eye exam was about 7 years ago. 7 year old prescription for contacts. 7 years ago my vision was 20/80. Oh, and my glasses are from my junior year of college; I will be 33 next month. I can never see anything (ask my girlfriends, they will attest to this). But I hate going to the eye doctor and so...I continue meandering through life slightly blind.

However...my last pair of contacts died on Monday. The ones that I leave in my eyes for months at a time, day and night. Ya wonder why they died? Yeah....Left with my 12 year old glasses (which are complete crap but allow me to at least see colors and vestiges of outlines) I decided, "I MUST GO TO THE EYE DOCTOR". I have been self prescribing my own contacts on 1-800-Contacts now for about 5 years; whenever stuff started to get blurry, I'd "reconfigure" my prescription a bit. No, I am not an eye doctor. Just a moron. This is why Carrie gave me a hard time when I complained of a headache after trying out a "new" prescription last summer.

Anyhoo...I showed up at Lenscrafters today, figured out my insurance, sweet talked them into letting me have an appointment RIGHT now (they could already tell I was a little on edge - not being able to see does that to a person), and went back to the exam room.

The technician took my crap glasses so now all I could see was different shades of fuzz and handed me a board with what she said contained drawings of 8 diamonds. She instructed me to tell her which parts of the diamonds were raised 3-D.

After looking at it for about a minute I handed it back and said,"Is this a trick question? I think it is...". "No, m'am", she said. "Try again". So I looked and looked - couldn't even tell these things were diamonds, handed it back and told her I couldn't see a thing. Then I laughed and asked again, was that a trick question, seriously? "No, m'am. ALL of the diamonds had 3-D raised dots". Failed that one.

Next machine - she wanted me to "look into the light" and press a button when I saw the wavy lines. "OK, go" she said. I sat there, waiting for the lines. "M'am, you can start now". "Oh", I said. "What am I looking for?" By now she probably thought I was mentally handicapped or high or maybe both. "The black and white lines m'am? The ones that are moving?" She had such hope in her voice when she said it. Yep. Still nothin'. "M'am PRESS THE BUTTON IF YOU SEE ANY MOVEMENT AT ALL". Uhhhh...I think I saw three little flashes...maybe. Failed that one too.

I also failed 2 more tests, the basic ones where you read the lines of letters and numbers, yada yada yada. Couldn't see jack.

So then the dr. came in and after I went through my whole spiel about how I refuse to do glaucoma testing because I hate the air puff in your eye thing AND the dilating thing (he was pretty concerned that I was refusing stuff but he should have just been proud of me for even sitting there, looking around at all the fuzzy haze), he asked me what brand of contacts I had been using. I fished out my last poor container of one lonely contact and handed it to him. He looked at it and asked how often I wore these things and how long I would leave them in my eyes. I told him he didn't want to know...but he assured me that he DID so I told him, oh, months at a time.

"M'am...these aren't even FDA approved for this prescription and the way you have been wearing them! Where did you get these things?" Uhhhh...I don't want to talk about it...He made some notes and looked really concerned...I'd have loved to have read those notes he made but you know, I wouldn't have been able to see them.

So we did a bunch of other vision related things, lots of different lenses and "does 1 look better or 2?" WOW! They ALL look great! This is already a HUGE improvement over my own personal prescriptions! Sign me up! WOW, I can see the second line from the top! Now the third! Oooooo, maybe even the fourth?

We finished, he made more notes and told me to never use those contacts again and to please only use what he was going to give me. I laughed, agreed and asked him how bad my vision was. "M'am...you're a big E". "Huh?" I asked. "Well, that means all you can see if the big E on the chart. Your vision is 20/400 and that's without taking the two astigmatisms into account. "I have TWO astigmatisms?!? WOW, no wonder my prescriptions haven't been working!"

I walked up to the front counter to pay my bill, brand new contacts affixed to my happy eyeballs...and my flip flop broke. So as I was paying my bill, I was also stapling and taping my flip flops back together. I must have been QUITE the site.

But hey, I could SEE my flip flops!