It started around the 4th of July. We were driving to the fireworks and I noticed that the streetlights had rainbows around them. I first thought that maybe they were some new kind of lights that I hadn’t noticed before (we rarely go out and drive at night) so I asked Tom if he could see them and he couldn’t. So I did a quick Google and found out that it might be cataracts and I should really make an eye appointment ASAP. Lovely.
Well then it was the Fourth of July holiday and then it was the weekend so I finally got around to calling on Monday…and of course as it turns out my optometrist is no longer working there and the clinic doesn’t take our insurance (my doc was the only one that did) and I really needed an ophthalmologist and not an optometrist.
Since I had had an emergency ophthalmology appointment in Virginia, I knew that the first appointment would be covered without a referral so I made a few calls and found a local office that could get me in on Wednesday. They did suggest I try to bring a referral with me just to make life easier, so I sent my doctor a text and they got back with me the next day saying that I had to start with an appointment with the ophthalmology clinic at the hospital otherwise nothing would be covered. Lovely. But they took walk-ins so off I went.
They got me in quickly. The problem started when they asked me to take out my contacts for the first round of tests. The first contact came out really easily—but the second contact would not come out no matter what I did. And I tried. AND TRIED. AND TRIED. My eye was totally bloodshot and it hurt from trying to squeeze a contact out or grab it off my eye.
And you know what? It turns out I didn’t even have a contact in my damn eye. WHAT?! Yeah, I have no idea where it went because I know I put it in in the morning. I have never had that happen in 30 years of wearing contacts so I was just completely flummoxed.
So the first doctor came in and did an exam and then sent me to another room to get a scan of my eye and then it was back to have a second doctor come in and look at my eyes and ask some questions. And then a third doctor came in and looked in my eyes and asked me some questions. By this point I was getting a little worried because THREE doctors. (I probably could have asked who they all were but I didn’t and they didn’t offer. I’m guessing maybe the first one was a student, and then an optometrist, and then maybe an ophthalmologist.)
The good news is that I don’t have cataracts. Since I wasn’t seeing rainbows all the time or on a variety of lights, she attributed it to needing different contacts. (When I got my eyes last examined in February, the doctor said I was very close to needing bifocals but I could still get along with my current prescription. This doctor said I probably should have gone with bifocals in February.)
So I now wear multifocal lenses. It’s cool because I can see both distance and up close!! Of course they’re more expensive. Lovely.
It sucks getting old. But it could be worse.