Dull Orange Planets

My optician took the whole looking into my eyes thing a step further this afternoon. He went so far as to take phtographs.

I seem to have reached a new mark in deteriorating vision. The NHS has stepped in the shoulder some of the expense of new glasses. I have moved into the next category or lenses too – a millimetre or two thicker and a whole lot more expensive to boot.

I remember the days of my youth when I used to try to memorise the letters on the card in the moments where the man was fiddling with lenses, just a few minutes before he asked me to take my glasses off. I felt sorry that my eyes were not improving at all and I didn’t want to discourage him, or make him think whatever he was doing wasn’t working.

Now I am bleakly honest. I am having a tough time reading the big letters, loet alone the next line down. I confessed that we were moving into the realm of guess work. I couldn’t see them clearly but knew enough to know the tall ones could be T and L, and the wider ones could be W and M – anything else was pretty much a hazy blob. Just because I guessed right didn’t actually mean I could see them!

“Can you read the last line?”

I laughed. They were the tiniest dots that could have been absolutley anything. They were beyond deciphering.

He had a good look at the back of my eye by shining a light in them. I couldn’t help but take my eye off the light I was supposed to be looking at to marvel at all the tiny little blood vessels that I could see. Amazingly delicate and fragile – it just made we think about how wonderfully and fearfully I am made.


Then came the highlight – the photograph. If 20/20 is perfect vision, I am more than half blind in one eye at least. With diabetes cropping up in the family, the back of my eye is getting more attention.

The picture he downloaded to his computer looked like a dull orange planet.

He muttered and mumbled as he entered data into a programme and I resisted the urge to tell him to speak up. Wihtout my glasses on, I am a tad hard of hearing. He gave the eyes a clean bill of health and told me to come back in two years time – or earlier if I felt like it.

I’d asked him if there were any eye exercises I could do to improve my vision. He told me that the eye wasn’t a muscle, so exercising wasn’t going to help. Not really believing him I checked out the internet. A million webpages seem to disagree with him. I could, apparently, improve my vision and reduce my presription by half if I stare at dots on the screen whilst holding a pencil somewhere near the end of my nose.

I actually think I look better with glasses than without – so I will pass on the dots and the pencil.