Another eye exam
Today I had to go back to the eye doctor to have my eyes measured for the cataract surgery a few months from now.
The first machine was in a very crowded room. The woman doing the measuring, Andrea, and I had to go in, close the door and only then was there room for me to sit at the machine.
I recognized it from my nerve problems 7 years ago.
"This is to do a 3D map of the back of my eye," I said.
"Correct."
"I had scans done with a similar one back in 2016."
"We didn’t have one then."
"It was in Boston, not here."
"You’re the first person to recognize it."
"I used to design laser systems and we spent a lot of time avoiding having lasers in our eyes. So, I remember the times it’s done on purpose."
She did the measurements and then we had to do the dance to get back out of the room for the next two machines.
The second you put your eye up to it, it flashed red, blue, white and green lights at you and then spun around in front of your face with no visible light.
"Sit still and don’t blink!" she told me. "It’s scanning when it’s dark."
My right eye, scanned first time, no problem.
The left that has the cataract was an issue.
Three scans, no results.
"Is it OK if I reach over and hold open your eye lid?" she asked.
I agreed. Still bad.
"I’m going to have someone come and hold your lid open for me," she said.
Victoria entered and sanitized her hands while another unnamed woman came in to watch as she’d "never seen this done before."
Sadly, the hand sanitizer Victoria used stung my eyes and did not help me keep them open.
"I can hold my own eye lid open," I said.
I did. It worked.
Victoria left, but the observing woman remained for the last test.
The last one also used scanning lights, but didn’t spin and seemed to go faster.
I confirmed that they were only going to operate on my left eye, despite scanning both.
"We just want the data on both for our records," Andrea said.
"OK, I just don’t want to wake up with an eye patch on the wrong side."
"Won’t be a problem."
We’ll see in 5 months…