Blind as a Bat

People who were born with good eyes are so lucky. Mine are so bad my retina detached.  For a while I was scared that I was going to actually go blind. 

Going to the eye doctor is probably one of my least favorite doctor visits. When I go to the dentist I'm usually a star. They compliment me on my no fillings molars and perfect enamel.  I've heard that my teeth are sooo white more then a few times and even though I don't floss they grudgingly admit that I am getting away with it but that I won't forever.  Paps are no fun of course but I'm over it.  I do it and it's done.  Blah.

The eye doctor is a totally different story altogether.  We do the initial exam without glasses and it's like taking a test that I can't study for and am designed to fail.  What's the smallest line you can read? Uh, I can't read any of them.  Which is better, one or two?  I don't know I can't see either one.  Then driving home with my eyes dilated is comical.  I can only do it because I live so close.  They give me black shades that basically look like cheap plastic sunglasses with no arms.  I stick them inside my glasses to keep the sunlight out and I drive with my chest in the wheel like an old lady.  I avoid looking left or right for fear of seeing someone laughing at me. 

If I want new glasses which I usually don't because I typically only wear them at home and generally hate every pair that I get then it's expensive.  High index lenses don't come cheap and unless I want my glasses to look like coke bottles I have to pay the extra money to get them.  It's usually about $300 or so and even with the high index it's still a pretty thick lens. And it's not the lens itself that bothers me.  My eyes don't look tiny or too big.  It's just that blurred area where the sides of my face look mashed in because you are looking at it through the lens.  So embarrassing.  My husband is always sweet enough to tell me that I look cute in my glasses even if I feel not so cute wearing them (post about that here).  He says that he's never ever dated a girl that didn't wear glasses so it's nothing new for him.  If I don't get glasses then I put all my insurance money towards the contacts and it's not so bad.  I'm a pretty decent contact wearer but you gotta take 'em out and put 'em in and sometimes they get dry and irritated. I've learned to tolerate a lot of discomfort in my eyes.

When I went in the other day to try on my trial contact lenses for my doctor he asked the front desk lady to help me.  I followed her to the sink area and she took the contact lenses out and placed them on the counter next to the sink and waited.  She stood there hovering even as I washed my hands.  I've been wearing contacts since high school; I think I can do this on my own I thought to myself.  I took out the first contact lens and then I remembered why she was waiting there watching me.  I can't see.  She took one look at my prescription and knew that placing the lenses on the counter and walking away would not be enough.   I would need someone there to physically put it in my hand so I could find it.  And then hand me the next one.

As blind as I am I can be corrected to almost 20/20.  Unassisted I am blind as a bat.  Except bats can actually see so I wonder where that saying comes from.  I can barely count the fingers on my own hand in front of my face and everything around me blends into a gelatinous mash of blurred shapes and colors.  I know my house pretty well but if I'm in a different environment or outside I have to feel my way around slowly.  When I look at my cell phone without my glasses it's 1 inch from my face.  I look ridiculous until Mj snatches my phone and tells me to put on my glasses.  If it weren't for contacts and glasses I might have had to go to blind school like Mary on Little House on The Prairie.  Is anyone reading this old enough to remember that show?

You might be thinking that you are blind too and that I'm probably not as blind as I think I am but chances are you will be wrong.  I've been wearing glasses since 4th grade and by now they are bad.  Like -10 bad.  I haven't met a single person who has a higher prescription then yours truly.  There probably are some folks in their 60's or 70's that do.  The retina in my right eye detached when I was in college.  Normally it takes a blow to the eye to do that but mine just happened spontaneously.  I had to have surgery to repair it.  They put a band around the back of my eye so it's shaped more like a fat hot dog then a circle.  I had to have some laser in the left to fix a few holes.  With such a high prescription at such a young age I figured it would just get worse until I couldn't see anymore.  I finally asked my doctor.  Am I going blind?  He assured me that I wasn't.  What a relief.

So yeah.  Going to the eye doctor sucks because it's a reminder of how visually impaired I am.  I know some people with bad teeth.  I got bad eyes.  My husband got perfect eyes AND teeth.  Life is simply not fair.

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