Can't....Handle....The Pressure!

In March I went for my annual eye exam and ended up spending entirely too much on two new pairs of glasses. My prescription changes just a teeny bit every year (amusingly, my eyes appear to be getting *better* as I age, so every year I could get weaker glasses) and so every two years or so I get new glasses. I decided this year it was time because two years ago I got Transitions lenses and boy...I hated them. I liked the fact that hey, sunglasses! Without changing glasses or carrying around another set in my purse. But then you go inside and it's like walking around in a tomb for fifteen minutes while they try to un-sunglass. And also? They don't work in the car. Which is when I really needed the sunglasses. Maybe that's just me though. (Not that they work in the car for other people, more than maybe I'm the only one who got them so that I could drive and still see other cars coming at me. It's a quirk I have.)

Anyway, at that appointment, the pressure in my eyes was "a little high." I'm fairly certain there's no family history of glaucoma, so I wasn't really worried, but he said come back in six or so weeks and we'll recheck them. I was supposed to go on Friday, but strangely they didn't want me to come in with pink eye. Imagine. So I rescheduled for today.

When I got there, they applied the annoying puff of air to my poor little eyeballs and hmmed and hawed and decided that while it was less high than in March, it was still "a little high" and thus I should take the visual field test. Essentially this is for your eyes what a hearing test is for your ears. (Everyone knows the hearing test, right? You wear the circa 1960 headphones and they play all kinds of beeps and tones and you click the clicky or raise your hand when you hear something.)

So, you sit on a chair and they put you in front of this big white bowl standing on its edge (this is what it looks like...either that, or the room where Mike TV meets his unlamented end in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Minus the chocolate, in this case, unfortunately.) You put your chin in the divot and an eyepatch over one eye (Arr!) and you stare at the yellow LED in the center of the bowl. And then they give you a clicker and whenever you see or think you see a light (while staring at the yellow LED - and you're not supposed to look around, so they're constantly moving your head ever so minutely if you start to look around to keep your vision centered on the LED) you click the clicky. This can take up to 5 minutes per eye.

After about 30 seconds on my right eye, there was a semi-permanent glow just off to the left of the LED that kind of looked like a light flashing off and on, but also kind of didn't...cause it didn't ever really go away. So I clicked it a few times, but then there were the real lights to click so I stopped clicking it even though it was mostly there.  My left eye didn't have that glow issue. But the black edges were creeping in on my vision throughout that one because really, go stare at a yellow LED pinpoint in a vast sea of white and see if your vision doesn't go black.

Anyway, my right eye took 3 and a half minutes. My left just over 2. (Apparently this is some sort of land speed record in my eye doctor's office. But they're not putting my picture on the wall or anything, which seems kind of like a cop out to me.) I didn't miss any lights and only had a few clicks that weren't actually lights (I'm guessing that's that glow.) And the eye doctor's only real comment was that I must be good at video games. Sadly, I'm not all that good at them. But I am good at seeing all the things coming at people coordinated enough to actually play video games and pointing them out. So I have that going for me.

I thought that was the end. But no! I got to have the fun little numbing drops and the exciting yellow dye. And more chin divots and forehead straps. And then more numbing drops and this little poker thing that he sets on your eyeball (yay for numbing drops) to measure corneal thickness.

I have to (get to?) go back in September for more air puffing and, if I fail that, another VFT.

But for now, all is good. I just apparently have pressurized eyes.