Well they have something anyway. Finding it a struggle to see small print, and having a £5 eye test voucher from Specsave, on Sunday I toddled off to get my eyes seen to for the first time in 3 and a half years. I took mum with me because its well difficult to choose new frames when you are as blind as a bat as I am.
The whole experience didnt start out so well when the guy doing the pressure test couldnt get my eye centred and ended up puffing about 10 times in each eye. Then a young irish girl, who's accent I struggled to follow, did the actual eye test.
Now I have been perching specs on my nose since I was 11 so thats over 40 years worth of eye tests, so I do have some idea of how these things go. They do not normally start by taking my glasses away and then asking me to say what the letter is in the mirror. Not with my perscription anyway. She was a tad upset when I said all I could see was a very blurred white blobby square! Ok she said, lets try the hand chart. So she got the hand chart and held it up to the mirror ... and that helped how? It was no larger and no nearer.
She moved a foot towards me, nope, still a white blob .... with a few black blobs on it.
She got the idea.
She put the lens holding frames on and shoved in some lenses. Yeah why didnt we just start from here?
If I wasnt too sure of her then, I lost total confidence when she started to give me encouragement to read the smaller letters on the chart - 'you can do it, you know you can read them, have a guess, go on!' Err and if I guess, how exactly does that help you work out my perscription?
It took nearly an hour to do the half hour bank of tests, partly because I just couldnt get an ear for her accent and partly because she was doing everything by the book - as per the above. Finally she worked out that I did need new glasses - durh!
Then she did the health tests, she spent aaaaages shining the light in my eyes, getting really annoyed when I didnt look at the mirror (which her head was obscuring) . She changed to the 3D camera but by now my concentration was lagging. After about 15 mins of bright lights on my retina she said I needed new glasses and to follow her. Outside as if in after thought she said I needed to do one more test. Still partially blinded by all the torch light torture, she wanted me to watch for black lines round a dot to appear and push the button when they did. Err what lines. Nothing appeared as shown on the chart, there was a faint flashing but no black lines. Four times we tried the test but no, couldnt see them or didnt understand what I was looking for.
Next thing I know she is putting me down to be refered to my GP? What?? yep, wait three days, ring GP for appointment, she would be making an immediate recommendation by letter that evening.
So this morning I rang my GP surgery, but the letter hasnt turned up yet. So I continue to worry and to carry a box round to catch my eyes in when they fall out!
Garden photos are still in my camera so please be patient and I will soon update more.
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