Doctor my eyes have seen the years

[fbhjr]

“Frank you don’t need glasses. You think your left eye is bad, but that’s only because your right eye is above average. Now as you get a bit older your eyes will continue to change. You will probably start to see a difference in a couple of years, and will probably need glasses some time in the next five years.”

That is what I was told in 1982.
Strangely, it is almost exactly the same as what I was told last night.

I am glad my eyes are OK.
But, I was almost sad to hear how disappointed he and his wife sounded about it.
As he was examining me I mentioned how I can’t have metal against my skin due to the nickel in it.
“Well, if you need glasses (sigh) which I can already tell you don’t,” he said. “You’d have to have titanium frames.”
Towards the end of the first part, he had me hold a piece of paper with very small writing on it.
“Try these lenses”, he said, moving a lens in front of my eye then back away. “It looks better with the lens, doesn’t it?”
“The lens magnifies it,” I said. “So, it looks bigger. But, they look equally clear to me.”
“Yeah, you don’t need reading glasses either,” he said, putting the lenses down. “But, in a few years your eyes might change shape, and then you will.”
After he put the eye drops in to dilate my pupils, he sent me back out to the waiting room until they took effect.
“While you wait, we can look at frames,” his wife said as I came out.
“He doesn’t need them!” the doctor shouted from the examination room.
“Oh,” she said, sadly. “Well, why don’t we make an appointment for the next time you come in? By then, you may need glasses!”

He did say I was very good at sitting still while he shone bright lights into my eye. I explained that I used to work with lasers and they did this sort of eye damage test on me every year I worked there. So, I was used to it.

His only concern was my eye pressure was a bit high. I explained everything I’ve got is high pressure. (8:05 and I’ve already started to yell at people at work…)
He says it is on the upper limit of what is OK. (19 out of 20, no idea what units) He says people cycle through pressure and if that’s the top, it’s OK. If that’s the bottom, steps will have to be taken. (Preventative Steps was the name of my Aunt’s dog 40 years ago…) He did say that all the nerves look good, so no immediate worry. I do have a follow up for it, but it’s not exactly a rush as the follow up appointment is a year from now. I hope it doesn’t come to anything. I know what evrgreen has to go through for that, and hope to avoid it.

The exam did leave my pupils large the rest of the night.

Comments

Wow - count yourself VERY fortunate !!!

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

To still not need even reading glasses at our age is pretty darn rare - I still don't believe that my wife is the same way. Perhaps I am just jealous because I've had to wear glasses since the age of 10.

Eye pressure at 20 mm of Hg is at the high end of "normal" - I know that my eyes will tolerate that level of pressure but as I am on several medications simultaneously, if my eye pressure does go that high any more that means something really isn't working. More "normal" readings are around 14 or 15mm of mercury. When I was first diagnosed with glaucoma, the pressure in my right eye was around 42 mm and I was experiencing headaches right behind my eyes that nothing would stop. Fortunately I only have a slight amount of nerve damage in that eye which is easily compensated by my other eye, except when I can only look through my right eye, such as in a telescope. If you do start getting headaches behind your eyeballs and it isn't a sinus infection type thing, head back to the eye doctor !

Also, I've learned that eye pressure is often the highest in the morning since we've been sleeping we don't move our eyes as much as we do when we're awake - even counting the REM portions of sleeping - and the eye movement seems to have something to do with it.