Othersideofmyhead.com

Today (Thursday) is my day off from work. Kind of weird to work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday then get a day off then go back in on a Friday (or, at least for this week: only work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday) but until I’ve proved my worthiness as an employee (that, or a win a spot for a Friday or Monday – mental note: get some co-workers fired) then Thursday it is. How can I complain though, a day off is a day off!

And what did I do on my day off? Well, I had a whole list of tasks that I needed to tackle, and I managed to complete some… but the big "to do" was go to the freaking eye doctor. I’m normally very good with getting my eyes examined once a year (I wear contacts), but since I lost my eye coverage (along with my job) last year… I’ve been putting it off until I have better insurance again. And that worked well for me, until I tried to order a new box of contacts last month and dammit, my eye doctor (in Rochester!) refused to validate the prescription without an exam. Darn it all, they’re just contacts!

My new health coverage doesn’t begin until 90 days after employment, and I’m now down to my last 2 lenses. Oh what to do? Well, I’m quite particular about who looks at my eyes, ever since I was about 5 years old and a terrible infection nearly blinded me in my right eye. While I can see pretty well out, there is visible damage. So yeah, I get a little nervous about just anyone looking at my eyes. Then I gave it so more thought, and after 25 years without any eye issues (aside from needing corrective lenses so I can see beyond 1 foot) I realized that I’m too vain to be wearing my glasses in public for the next few months, so I scheduled an appointment with a chain eye store.

Well, I must this chain eye store had some lovely, friendly people working there. They took me in at a moment’s notice and quoted me a reasonable price for the exam since I’d be paying out of pocket... and off we went!

I’m not typically dilated for a contact lens check up, but they insisted that I get photos of my retina taken since it's been 3 years since my last "big" eye exam. I agreed and the drops went in. Having your retina’s photographed is a pretty cool experience, because the retina can tell a lot about a person’s overall health. That, and I love to see pictures of my insides. While working on my degree in biomedical photographic communications years ago, my concentration was in ophthalmic photography… where I learned about every possibly disease that can effect the eye, and what it looks like. More importantly, I worked with special big expensive cameras that focused on the fundus, through a dilated pupil and exposed the image onto film (yes, film). And only after the film was developed (typically slide film) a doctor would closely examine the images and provide the patient with a diagnosis. And while we did use some digital technology at that time, it was still a big song and dance.

And after paying $$$ to learn all of these severely underutilized skills (aside from being able to diagnose my own eye), today, I had a mere eye tech effortlessly smooch my eye up against a plane of glass and asked me to press a button once properly aligned. Within one second – my retinal images were on the computer screen. The whole experience made me realize that leaving my 4 year degree in medical photography to pursue a now 8 plus year career in web development and multimedia was a smart move. Nowadays, a monkey could photography your eye (oh the hilarity). I often wonder why my previous major even still exists.

Aside from the newly discovered astigmatism in my left eye (I only had it in my right before) everything is grand in the vision department - and that makes me happy. As for the rest of my day off… useless. I couldn’t bloody focus on anything and my dilation made me feel all wonky. So I took a 3 hour nap, which after consuming a plate of huevos rancheros for lunch... not a good idea for the tummy. Anyway, groggy and acidic or not… V just popped in to tell me the Sabre's game is on so I’m off to see if I can focus on the TV again. Good day off.