Look Into My Eyes

I made it through the eye exam. It ended up only taking an hour and a half. I guess that's because the tech who was doing some of the tests was so quick. The guy I had before was too slow.

Anyway, I can't really see what I'm typing right now because my eyes have been dilated. The computer screen is too bright despite the fact that I have all my curtains closed and sit in a semi-dark room. It was a bitch trying to drive home through squinty eyes, but you do whatcha gotta do. At least I only live about 10 minutes away from work.

Here's a pix of my dilated eyes. You can just see the brown ring (iris) around the black center (pupil) starting to come back. Disregard the weird slanted angle and semi-cocked eye look I have. I had to use my laptop's camera to take the pix and wasn't sure where I was looking. I also had to balance the laptop in one hand and push my mouse button with the other to take the pix. I wasn't getting enough light with the laptop on my desk but couldn't really open the curtains.



So back to the exam. I came a few minutes early, and like last time, the receptionists were gossiping again. Unlike last time though, the waiting room was empty. I waited a few minutes and was taken in by the tech to run some tests. I don't exactly know what they all were for, but suffice it to say there were a lot. I assume they were checking my eyes for health, mapping them out electronically, measuring the pupil sizes and all that good stuff. Some of it they did at my pre-screening and some of it was new.

After a bunch of "look at the red light," "look at the orange light," "open . . . okay and blink . . . and open . . .," "put your chin here" and "can you read that for me?" I was done. The eye doctor came in and took a reading of my refractive error (meaning, she basically got my prescription). Then the surgeon himself did some tests and readings. He shined a bright light into my eyes and measured my eyeballs with a caliper. That caliper thing isn't for the faint of heart as I'm pretty sure he was touching my eyes with the metal. However I can't be positive since my eyes were numbed and dilated at the time.

After a quick review of the surgery schedule, brief instructions about when and how many drops I needed to put into the first eye (my left by the way) and paying my bill, I was done. Again, I felt the tech, doctor and surgeon were nice. The receptionists were, I suppose, your stereotypical front office staff. They gossiped when the boss isn't around but got down to business when he walked in the door. They weren't really attentive to me at all. The coordinator was brisk, again, and it felt like she was rushing me, again. She definitely doesn't have a good rapport with patients . . . or at least this patient. But whatever, she's not doing my eyes so I can live with her.

Overall, the exam went fairly quickly. Looking forward to next week's surgery. So the plan is for me to start using these antibiotic drops three times a day beginning Sunday. I don't use any on the day of the surgery, which is Wednesday. I don't eat or drink anything from midnight on Wednesday morning. I show up at 10:00 a.m. for surgery and the whole thing takes a couple hours. I guess they need to re-check your eyes, dope you up and let you chill out before the surgery. The surgery itself only takes about 15 minutes. That's how long it took when I watched it. Then I get picked up at noon, grab some lunch and come back at 1:00 p.m. to check the pressure in my eye. I come back on Thursday for a post-op check up. If all goes well, I repeat this thing the following week for the right eye.