Birthd-eye

Happy birthday to me! Guess what I got for my birthday this year?

Astigmatism!

I don't go to the doctor too much. I'm a complete wuss about medical stuff. Throw all the fake movie gore on the screen you want, but it doesn't take much in real life to get me all dizzy and light-headed. It has nothing to do with the actual doctor or fear of the profession; I just can't take medical procedure. Even the basic stuff. I once got light-headed when someone took my blood pressure.

Anyway, in the last couple of months or so, I'd really begun to notice that my vision at far distances just didn't seem to be what it used to. Last time I'd been checked (an embarassingly long time ago), I had better than average vision, so I was really feeling a bit disoriented at the sense of image "ghosting" I was feeling at distances -- particularly at night.

So I started poking around with some friends, asking if they'd recommend their eye doctor. It was a little bit of a hard sell in a few cases, trying to convince people that I really thought there might be something wrong with my eyes when I was complaining about not being able to read things at distances that had them saying things like "I just got my prescription filled two weeks ago, and I can't read that." But I finally decided to go with Shocho's recommendation, and got checked out yesterday.

It was a little touch and go there for a bit. Even though the doctor was really great, wasn't doing anything serious, and I completely understood that 100% on an intellectual level, my strange reaction kicked in and we had to have a couple moments of "I need to just lie down for a minute." But when we were all done, the verdict was in: I'm slightly near-sighted, and have a slight astigmatism.

So my one-day-early birthday present to myself was my first pair of glasses. The theory is they're not "all the time" glasses, but then the doctor said I'm meant to use them for things like nighttime driving and going to the movies, and if he knew me as well as some of you here do, he'd know that could well be most of the time. (grin)

Those of you who have had glasses for a while may not be able to recall or appreciate what a truly surreal experience it is buying your first pair of glasses. How do you even begin to know what you like? I must have tried on a hundred pairs and drove the nice woman at the doctor's office completely batty.

The extra funny bit of it was that I ended up going with the very first pair I tried on. When I came back from the exam room, this woman tells me that she likes to think ahead about what sorts of glasses might look on people, "just in case," and that she was thinking about this one for me. And she was right on the money, because though I put on virtually every set of glasses in the place, each one was worse than the last.

Of course, with Thanksgiving chewing up half the week here, I have to wait a little extra time before I actually get my new glasses. And it's funny how that's already having a subtle little impact on the way I'm thinking about things. I was driving home late last night, and thinking that somehow things at a distance were looking even a little less crisp that just the day before. I'd been thinking about going to see a movie this weekend, but now a little part of me is going... "meh, maybe I'll just stay home and watch a DVD instead."

All over what I'm sure many of you would think was barely noticeable. What can I say... you just get used to seeing things a particular way. And I'd like it back, thank you.