I have had glasses since I was in the second grade. While poor eyesight runs in my family, I have always wondered if my habit of staying up until two o’clock in the morning reading by flashlight under the covers did anything to add to the rapid decline of my sight. Currently, I’m at a solid -4.75, which, in prescription terms, means I have a tough time seeing just about anything.
Being a naturally indecisive person, going to the eye doctor has always been stressful for me. I sit down in that chair, successfully (usually) refrain from telling my doctor to ‘use the Force’ and ‘let go’ when he puts Luke Skywalker’s trench run targeting computer in front of my face, and then proceed to sweat profusely as he asks me over and over whether two absolutely identical lenses make my eyesight better or worse.
Ok, here’s the thing. I’m dumb. I don’t know anything about eyes. That’s why he’s the doctor and I’m the idiot in the chair making Star Wars references. Why is he asking me about what’s good for my eyes? For all I know, I could be saying the complete wrong thing and unwittingly propelling myself down the path to blindness by age 30. Shouldn’t there be some kind of tool that measures the size and shape of my eyeball, or a machine that can detect the health and number of the magical all-seeing tubers that wriggle around in the back of my head? Why do I feel like I’m doing all the work here, sitting the most important exam of my life?
Then, a week later (after agonizing over the size, shape and color of a new pair of frames for approximately two hours and then choosing the pair that looks exactly like my old ones), I pick up my new glasses and the nice lady working there asks me if they ‘fit’. If they ‘feel good’. Lady, I don’t know a damn thing about fitting glasses. What is it supposed to feel like? I guess it feels alright. Until the next day when I’m at work staring at a computer screen for 8 hours and there are deep red marks on my nose and a bruise behind my ear. I’ve been back twice since last Monday, and I’m still not sure they fit ok. Who has time for this shit? Why aren’t they taking measurements, like a tailor, or making a mold of my face, like a dentist does my teeth, and forming frames that exactly fit the shape of my oddly proportioned, non-symmetrical head?
All I’m saying is, it’s almost 2013. Shouldn’t there be a better way for doctors to do this than them having to rely on my fool self? It’s gotta be as frustrating for them as it is for me (case in point: my doctor shows me two lenses and asks me to pick which one is better. When I respond ‘number 2’, he says ‘….really….?’ in a very skeptical voice.) There must be a way to innovate this process so that the guesswork is removed, and I don’t lie awake at night, wondering if I really ought to have gone with option number one.
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