Eye Exams

I went to the eye doctor today. I rewarded myself with a chocolate chocolate doughnut. Yum.

I don't exactly mind the eye doctor so the reward wasn't entirely necessary, except that I should have gone in half a year ago, but as you may remember, July was official breakdown month of 2013. The reminder postcard came in the mail. I looked at it despairingly before putting it in a pile of papers labeled mentally as 'to deal with sometime other than now.' Once something makes it into that pile, it takes large amounts of can-do to get it back out again.

More than deserving a doughnut for finally going, I deserved a doughnut for surviving my eye exam.

I like my eye doctor. I've been visiting him for years. I've worn glasses since I was eight and contacts since I was thirteen. I'm familiar and comfortable with the routine of the exam.

But what if I do it wrong? The doctor has me take out my contacts. He then puts his funky bug eye thing up to my forehead and starts asking me which is better: 1 or 2, 3 or 4, 5 or 6. I want to answer exactly as I did the year before because that means my eyes haven't changed at all. When you're as blind as I am there's nothing better than hearing your eyesight is stable. But I can't remember how I answered last year, and it's not that I want to lie about which one is better, I just want to know that I'm answering the same so I can feel good about having stable eyes. I start feeling stressed and anxious when I think I might be giving different answers, and since I can't remember what my answers were a year ago there's a high, as in above 50%, chance my answers are different, which gives me reason to stress.

Or maybe I won't answer like I did last year but instead I'll answer them all wrong and I'll end up with the wrong prescription and I won't be able to see anything for a whole year until I go back again and I get the right prescription unless I answer them all wrong again and get another bad prescription.

It's the stuff of nightmares, I tell you.

And so I gave myself a doughnut.