my kind of root canal...

Some people hate going to the dentist, or the doctor, or hate anesthetic, or medical exams, or needles, or colonoscopies....well I hate going to the optometrist.

Going to the optometrist instills fear in me, it has ever since I was a fourth grader who needed glasses. Every time I went to see the eye doctor he would tell me my eyes were worse...I was getting more blind. No one ever told me my eyes would level off, so I thought my eyes would get worse and worse until I couldn't see any more. As a child this is hard to handle, and every optometrist was the same, telling me I needed a stronger perscription. I thought maybe if I got the answers to their questions right, my eyes would be better, so when I got told I was giving wrong answers, my fears increased and I wanted to read those little letters on the bottom line even more!!!

To this day, I hate going to the optometrist, even though the last 4 or 5 times I've gone, my perscription has stayed the same and it seems my eyes are leveling off, I still have this fear that I'll get the answers wrong and my eyes will be worse again :(

Today I had an eye appointment, but i've also had a bit of a chest cough for the last little bit, so on the way to my appointment, i stopped and bought some Benelyn. I love this stuff. I didn't have a spoon so i got to the eye place, parked and took a few swigs from the bottle before shoving it into my glove box and getting out of my car. The guy in the vehicle next to me must have wondered....

I swear they put things in the air in optometrist offices to make your eyes go blurry the mintue you enter the door. As i'm sitting and waiting i had to keep blinking to keep my eyes from blurring up, then I forgot to hand in my form so i waited longer than normal in the reception area panicking about reading the bottom tiny line of letters on the chart. What I dont understand is the first thing they do to you when you are in the 'pre' test area is flash the brightest light possible into your eyes to take a picture of your retina which leaves you seeing white dots for the whole rest of your exam!! How am I supposed to score well after that? Then they make you stare without blinking so your eyes dry out and want you to push a clicker every time you see a squigly square come onto a white screen with a black square in the middle that is an optical illusion in itself! You never know if you are seeing what your supposed to be seeing or are imagining the bright white flash as a squiggly square! I do feel pretty confident with the color blindness test though, i can always get the numbers. What was good about today was when i went in for my actual test, the optometrist did a shorter routine than normal. He told me my retina's looked normal, and my perscription was the same and only asked me two or three times about the little letters. I was so relieved. Anxiety abated, I was able to walk out knowing I dont have to go through this horror again for another year or two.

I think the trick is....Benelyn.