Every single time I go in to the eye doctor’s office to refill my contact prescription, I get basically the same response from the lady at the front desk.

“I’m sorry Kate, it seems your prescription expired 2 months ago.”

Or…

“Oh, it looks like your due for an exam.Your prescription expired 3 weeks ago.”

Or…

“Too bad you didn’t find a closer parking spot, Kate. Your prescription expired 43 seconds ago!”

Every. Single. Time.

And thus the tone is set for the remainder of the visit.

Here are the reasons why I really, REALLY don’t like going to the eye doctor’s office (which I have affectionately nicknamed the optometry chamber of tortures).

• The visit starts off with a lie. They lead you to a dark room and have you sit in a chair and tell you to place your chin and forehead in a frightening looking contraption. Next you’re instructed to sit still, look forward and keep your eyes open while they put a gentle puff of air into your eye. A GENTLE PUFF OF AIR, my eye! (Bad pun intended.) It’s more like a hurricane force  blast of air straight through the eye and into the brain. And it never fails, you can’t keep your eyes open, and have to repeat the procedure until either a.) you instantaneously develop ninja-like mind over matter powers of concentration, or b.) they shake their heads and finally give up on you and move on the the next part of the exam.
• The eye doctor invades your personal space, big time. I know he’s got to shine that little 1,000,000 watt light into your eyeball to see how things are going in there, but must he put his face 3 inches from yours to do it? And must he have always had something with onions in it for lunch?
• The dreaded question, “Which line can you read down to?” A simple enough question, however, I never really quite know how hard I should be trying. I mean, should I read to where I can really see clearly, or should I squint and and use my powers of letter-shape deduction to make it to the next line? That’s always a tough call for me.
• The number TEST! Which is better? 1…or…2? In the beginning it’s fairly simple to tell the difference. One of them is obviously clear, the other is not. But after a few rounds of this game, the pressure mounts and all of the sudden you feel like you’re back in school and are unprepared for a pop quiz. You can’t tell a difference between 1 and 2, so he repeats it again and then you hesitate because you still can’t tell, so he asks once again. Afraid of looking stupid because you can’t answer the simple question about which one looks better, you just pick one. And then your mind races and thinks, ‘What if I picked the wrong one and I get the wrong prescription and I have to spend the next year paying for my wrong answer?’
• And the final insult…frame selection. The problem should be obvious here. There are no real lenses in the frames so you can’t actually SEE how you look in the frames. Hello! That’s why you are there, because you can’t see.

So there you have it. Is it just me? Am I just a really odd, quirky person? Care to share your optometry visit pet peeves?

~Kate

Enjoy your coffee break.

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