Then I remembered that I have optical coverage through the VA. That's it; I realized, I can go to the eye doctor. For some reason we forget how miserable it can be to go to the eye doctor for an exam until we are actually sitting in the chair. This latest trip was filled with discomfort from the moment I walked into the waiting room.
I made my appointment and when the day arrived I hobbled into the waiting room and went to the desk to check in. There were three people behind the counter laughing and talking like it was a holiday office party- one that I clearly wasn't invited to judging by how well they were ignoring me. I was the only person in line and was surprised that I was being so completely ignored while there were three people working; one of which could have at least said, "We'll be with you in a moment."
"Look at my crutches," I was thinking. "Take pity and check me in so I can go sit down." My Jedi mind trick failed miserably and I stood there for several minutes waiting for someone to acknowledge my presence. A line of five more veterans formed behind me while the clerks sipped champagne and regaled each other with tales of making other people wait for no obvious reason other than their own self-absorption.
I should mention here that, while I sincerely love this VA Medical Center and the top-notch care they provide, the service from the desk at the optical clinic is always lacking. They never answer the phone when you try to call and make an appointment. NEVER. In the past I've had to go through what is known as a Patient Advocate to get me through to the people partying at the desk. I think the Patient Advocate disguised himself as the pizza man and when he got there with their order he told them to answer the phone. That was the only time I've ever gotten through to them via telephone in fifteen years. Being injured was actually a blessing in this case because I was off from work and already at the VA when I made my appointment in person a couple weeks before.
Finally, a girl reluctantly called me forward and asked for my check-in information. She did this with all the warmth of a Popsicle; I'm pretty sure we never even made eye contact. "Have a seat sir and they'll call you in a minute. Next!" she called to the person behind me, an elderly war vet.
She asked him in a loud voice, "Sir, did you try using the kiosk to check in?" while pointing toward a computer terminal installed against a wall, off to one side of the waiting room. He looked around bewildered; he was from an era in which people dealt with people, not machines. We all looked at the computer; the entire waiting room of forty people glanced at it. It was located in a place where it could be easily overlooked or I might have used it myself and not had to lean on my crutches for five minutes.
"It's for your convenience," she announced in the same loud voice.
"Or for your convenience," I muttered, taking a seat. If they moved the kiosk over to the desk where people would notice it, we could get rid of at least two of the three people that had been ignoring us inconvenient morons waiting in line to be helped. I know who would go first.
The TV was on, but it was mounted to a wall with no remaining chairs facing it; they were all occupied. I took a seat pointed away from it and tried to turn around enough to watch, but soon gave up with a sigh; it was too uncomfortable. Normally I wouldn't care about watching TV, but I wanted something to pass the time in the waiting room and the magazines weren't an option.
I don't consider myself a germaphobe, I'll drink out of a public fountain, I'll use public restrooms- something my wife will avoid to the point of her extreme discomfort and the discomfort of those around her being forced to listen to her pleas to hurry and get home. But I've recently developed a deep disgust for waiting room magazines. My skin crawls thinking about all the sick and disease-ridden people that have held a waiting room magazine. I imagine myself contracting some incurable disease like Leprosy, or at the very least, Cooties, from a water damaged issue of House and Garden. I avoid them like the Plague.
So I waited patiently until my name was called. I also accidentally discovered where the expression "waiting patiently" originated. It was obviously derived from hospital patients that have to sit around and wait whether they like it or not; hence, waiting "patiently."
My name was called and I crutched it into the exam room. The doctor was a young kid; a nice enough guy, but I really start to feel old when my doctors would look more at home in a performance of High School Musical than in a medical office. Sitting down he asked me all the routine questions, had me read some lines off the chart with my glasses on and then the real exam began. He pulled the lens machine over toward my face and cleaned it off before having me place my head against it. I always have a problem with that initial reading of the first line they show you when you're looking through the machine. "Can you read this line please?" they ask. "Um, let's see now, P or maybe it's an F, V, A, D or maybe an O and some kind of squiggly thing, maybe a K or an E?"
"Perfect," he said. They always say this. It must be an attempt to comfort you so you don't realize you are going blind; they don't want people in the waiting room to hear you start weeping. How could that have been perfect? I had to guess at three of them. Two out of five ain't bad? I hope this average isn't considered perfect in other areas of the medical profession. Would a surgeon losing three out of five patients on the operating table declare that a victory? "Perfect, and I can still get in a round of golf at the club."
The thing is, they trick you. The first time looking through the machine they don't use your current prescription. It's as if they want to make sure you haven't experienced a medical miracle and suddenly have perfect eyesight since taking off your glasses five seconds ago. Then they'll flip the lenses around until it is your prescription and have you read it again. When you get them all right this time they act as if you have them to thank for this vast improvement. Maybe we could skip the initial fear mongering and get right to the part where we check my vision with the right lenses in place?
Then comes the part where they try and make improvements to your prescription for you and they keep flipping the lenses around. "Which is better, one or two?" You don't want to get this wrong. Suddenly there is all this pressure to have the right answer when most of the time you can't tell if there is any difference at all.
"Um- one. I think. Can you do it again?"
"One or two."
"Two?" I hope.
"Three or four?"
"Three?" maybe.
"Five or six?"
Long pause.
He flips them again, "Five or six?" he repeats in a singsong voice.
"Umm, Six?"
"Seven or eight?"
By this point I don't care if there's a difference, my self esteem has already been destroyed by indecision. I make a decision quickly to try and regain a sense of assurance, "Eight."
"And nine or ten?"
"Ten," I declare firmly, finally taking charge of my life.
"Perfect," he says. "Now we're going to take a quick look inside your eye with an industrial laser that will melt your optic nerve and burn a hole through the back of your head."
Okay, he didn't say that, but he should have; there needs to be more honesty and transparency in the optical field. What he did say was he was going to take a quick look at my eye with a light. This is the part of the exam where they shine a light into your eye to look at how healthy your eyeball is. If someone ever comes up with a better way to do this they will never have to work again. I; for one, would also be happy to reward them with never having to pay taxes again and a private island in the Caribbean. This is such a painful experience for me that it's difficult to put it into words. I think what really happens is that they first blind you with the light and then they jam an ice pick into your eye.
"Look riiight here at the tip of my ear," he says, pointing, while looking through some high tech binoculars and focusing the beam of light off of a mirror and into my eye. It isn't a natural thing to keep your eye open with a bright light shining in it. I try valiantly to obey, my eye trying it's best to squint itself shut while I try to force it to stay open through a superhuman act of will. My whole body tenses and I clench my fists as the light stings it's way through my pupil.
"You have to hold your eye open," he tells me.
"I'm trying."
"Here," he says, reaching for my eye and causing me to flinch, "let me help you." He uses his thumb and forefinger to hold my eye open while he directs the super-heated beam of plasma energy through my eyeball and into my brain, causing my eye to water and instinctively want to blink. I force myself to stare at the light as long a possible and then I can't take it anymore; I have to pull away and blink and rub my eyes. The doctor seems upset that I've interrupted the fun time he was having.
"It's okay," he says, sounding exasperated, "go ahead and blink."
I force my head to go back into the machine so I can get this procedure over with. After a few more minutes of intense suffering, it's done. But I have to do it again.
"Okay now we're going to put some drops in your eyes to dilate them and have you come back in in about twenty minutes." The first drops burn and the second leave a yellow stain on my face. I go back out to another waiting room that is smaller. This is for the happy people waiting for their eyes to dilate. No one talks. At least there is a TV and all the chairs are facing it.
Twenty minutes later and back in the chair, the exam resumes innocently enough. The doc uses a small, circular instrument with a purple circle of light on it to measure the pressure in my eyeball by pressing the circle directly against my eye. No problem, this is a vast improvement over the old method of shooting a needle thin blast of air against your eyeball to get the same information. And my eye is numb from the drops, so I don't feel it.
But then comes the light again. This time he's trying to look at the back of my eye and my optic nerve, but it's the same excruciating light being shined into my peepers. Now, with my eyes dilated, my pupils can't contract in self defense and it seems even worse than before. Again I have to turn away from the light, blinking and rubbing tears from my eyes. Feeling less of man, I force my head back into the cradle and press on.
The kid chuckles, "It's funny, you know, everyone reacts differently to it. We had to do this to each other for four years in school and people just have different reactions." This; of course, is an obvious lie. It's as if he would have me believe that some students reacted with joy and excitement when experiencing what felt like a light saber being shoved through your eye.
Again I stared into the beam of death, and again I had to turn away, blinking and tearing up. Then I notice him making some kind of adjustment to the machine. This time, when I put my head back in the cradle, the light isn't nearly as bright. He had turned it down? I was silently calculating how much time I would have to spend in jail if I punched him in the face. He had waited until the last two minutes of my eye exam to provide me relief that he could have chosen to give me from the beginning. He had to use a little telescope now to see what he needed to see, but so what; Dr Mengele here could have turned the light down earlier when he saw my obvious suffering. I'm sure he only chose not to because it would have inconvenienced him. Maybe he was dating the receptionist, they seemed to have a lot in common.
With the pain significantly reduced, the procedure was a breeze after that. So take that away with you, if you ever have your eyes dilated you can ask them to turn the light down. In all the years I've had to experience this torture, I never knew they could do this; they probably don't want the secret getting out. Knowledge is power my friends. Is that a black van parked across the street from my house?
to hold my eye open while he directs the super-heated beam of plasma energy through my eyeball and into my brain .....
ReplyDeletei laughed out loud at this point :)
Lol- at least someone laughed at that point, I was too busy crying. :)
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