Antennae Are Superior to Eyeballs: A Treatise

I went to the opthamologist today to have my eyes checked.

My grandfather, who was a wonderful human being, infected most of my family with Granular Corneal Dystrophy. If it sounds like a horrible degenerative disease, it’s because it is. It’s a funny looking eye disease – like someone took orange and red crayons and colored the surface of my cornea with little dots. When light shines through the dots, I’m blinded. Night driving and really bright sunshine on snow are the worst, but lights on a rainy night are pretty bad too. Most of the aunts and uncles have had cornea transplants and I think all but two cousins have it as well. Not pretty.

Anyway, this is a long preamble to the real story and that is that I saw a specialist today to make sure my eyeballs are on the up and up. I go to the optometrist every year. I’m not afraid of eye exams. I hate the puff of air, but I manage.

So when the eye doctor tech numbed my eyes and told me he was going to test for glaucoma, I thought, piece of cake.

Um, yeah.

They don’t do the puff of air. They put your chin in a contraption, tell you to look at a black disc and then attempt to touch your eyeball with a blue glowing cone. And that’s where I get off the train.

He says, don’t worry you won’t feel anything. Open wide and try not to blink.

Of course, the first thing I do IS blink and then I feel my eyelashes hit the glowing blue cone. And then my head explodes. I break out into a cold sweat, the tunnel vision starts and I almost pass out in the contraption. He never does touch my eye. But like a nice little helper, he does fetch me some water.

Rick, who is there to drive me home, tries to get me to focus on anything but the blue cone that is rapidly approaching my eyeball, to no avail. Think about your book, he says. (Now as an aside, that would normally work, but since the only thing I could think of was the dead body of my victim splayed out on the ME’s table, it didn’t really help..)

I decided that I’d rather have antennae, instead of eyeballs, which are viscous and weird and probably really gross when they’re not in your head. Rick does not agree.

I am happy to report that I did not pass out and that the doctor did successfully administer the test. He held my eyelids open so that they wouldn’t touch the cone and send me into shock.

This, my friends, is the difference between a seasoned doctor and an eye doctor tech who is afraid to touch you. Whatever, I’m a dork. I just don’t want someone touching my eyeball.

But you could touch my antennae. I’d let you.