Miasmatic Review

I can see again.

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to update, I’ve had an interesting time over the last couple of days. Right now I’m not going to go into detail about the re-enactment, but I will regale with a tale that started out at the event. Saturday night while trying to avoid hypothermia from the bone chilling cold rain and wind my eyeglasses broke. That wasn’t that big of a deal as I’m far-sighted and only really need the glasses to see anything closer than arms length to my face. In other words with out my glasses if I can’t old the print out far enough, then I just can’t read it.

This only presented a problem when trying to do things like read the gages on my truck, or anything on a computer. My old glasses wouldn’t even hold a lens and stay on my face come Monday morning. Fortunately I had Monday off. I took Boopie to school, hit the bank to make a deposit. As a side note I think the tellers had a lot of fun watching me try to fill out a deposit slip. With out my glasses I’m writing it at arms-length. Ever try to fill out a deposit slip at arms length? Fortunately the teller took pity on my and offered to do it for me. Which I was grateful for and annoyed about at the same time, I hate it when I can’t do things for myself. Since I had given myself a headache trying to fill it out, I let myself be dotted on like a senile old man.

After the bank I went to the mall. It had the only Lens Crafters near me that could do glasses in an hour. I couldn’t go a week with out my glasses. When I get to the mall, I realize I’m about 40 minutes early. All the stores are closed and the only people there are mall walkers, you know the people that do laps around the mall for exercise. Not wanting to sit around like some kind of store stalker, I decided to be the youngest old person there. I started doing laps around the mall. Hell, I was partially blind anyway.

When the store opened, they wouldn’t just get me new glasses. Since it’s been three years since my last eye exam, they wanted to do a new one to make sure nothing had changed. Eh, it needed to be done anyway. They did a quick repair of my old glasses just so I could take the tests. This is what we learned during the exam. A) I’m still partially colorblind. 2) I have 60/20 vision at distances. I can see at 60 feet what most normal people can see at 20. C) I’m damn near legally blind at less then 2.5 feet from my face. I completely failed the up close reading test. I only got the first line right, E, and that’s because I guessed. It was blurry and could have been an E, 8, H, 6, 9, 5, 2, or R. But since most eye charts start with an E, that’s what I said. Then I admitted I could just barely make it out.

Then to make things worse they had to check the inside of my eye, so they gave me these drops that made my eyes dilate. That was fun; they warned me my vision was going to be blurry for a while after. While the drops took affect, they sent me out to pick out frames. As my vision quickly deteriorated I had to pick out frames. Do you know how hard it is to pick out frames when you can’t see? Fortunately they have a 30-day money back guarantee, because I think I picked out frames I like, but I really couldn’t see to tell you the truth.

With frames picked out they told me that since I wanted the UV protection, glare resistant lenses it would take a week to get them. Apparently the glasses in an hour thing only apply if you get cheap frames and the minimalist of lenses. Again I explained I couldn’t wait a week for my new glasses, as I needed them right away. The girl helping me said she would have my old frames repaired for free as a temporary fix. She told me that if they didn’t last until I received my new glasses, they would even set me up with a temporary pair using my old lenses.

The whole time I’m going through this, my eyesight is worsening. Finally they call me back in for the final part of the exam. Alls well, my prescription hasn’t changed that much and other than my myopia, my eyes are fine. Then I ask how long before my vision comes back. The doctor tells me “three hours.” WHAT?!?!?!?! I drove myself here; I can’t wait around the mall for three hours until my vision returns to normal. I’ll go insane! The doctor offers to give me some drops that will help restore the vision quicker, but she warns me that it stings pretty badly. Hey, I don’t care. I’ll take the physical pain over the mental pain of being in the Mall longer than I need to be.

Well the doctor wasn’t laying the restoration drops stung worse than campfire smoke in the eyes, but it was worth it. I only had to wait around the mall for an additional 30 minutes. By the time I returned home, I had a headache that wouldn’t go away. By the time everything returned to normal and the headache went completely away it was late in the day.

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t posted until now.