Eyeballs

Anything having to do with eyes gives me the heebie jeebies. Eye injuries, eye surgery, the sort of eye anatomy diagrams and models they have at the optometrist—or worse: diagrams or photos of eye problems—all of it makes me want to hurl. One of my bro’s has had lasik done, and my Dad just has cataract surgery, and it all seems to have worked out fine for them, but please, don’t tell me the details. It’s a mystery how I manage to put in contact lenses. Dogs have an interior eyelid and YB frequently naps with that one closed but the outer ones open, which is a freaky look.

I’ve been to the optometrist twice this week and had to suffer all sorts of miseries:

• There’s the air-puff eyeball pressure thing. I know what’s coming and I can’t relax. Because I’m so flinchy, they have to do it three or four times per side.
• And there’s the dilation. I flinch at the drops, so they’re hard to get in, then my eyes feel funny all day and I can’t read and it feels weird when I close my eyes, so no napping either.
• After that, there’s the thing where the doctor looks into my eyes with the bright light, and I don’t like that very much. Plus, she has to give me more drops (“This might sting”) and then even more drops (the last one is the runny yellow dye)
• And then there’s the refinement of my prescription. Better this one? Or that one? This one? That one? They all look blurry and awful to me, and by this point I have usually memorized whatever combination of letters they are showing me so my imagination fills in the part I can’t actually see.
  

The very best part of all is that I have both glasses and contact lenses. Ya can’t put in contact lenses when your eyes are dilated, and ya can’t check the fit of contact lenses when they aren’t in. My HMO has not figured out how to coordinate the contacts/glasses bit with the dilation bit (first check fit of contacts, then dilate and check prescription, Duh) so I always have to have two visits. Yesterday was dilation. Today was contacts. Because she didn’t like my eyeball pressure yesterday (just typing it makes me heave a little, because I imagine my eyeball exploding or something from excessive pressure), I had to redo the air puff thing today. Then I got the yellow dye drops. Then she checked my contacts. The dye made my eyes itchy so the contacts had to come right out, and they’re a nice shade of yellow. They are not supposed to be yellow. I may not have the stomach to use these again.