EYE CHECK

Fear not, my glasses don't have the moustache...

There's nothing like going to the eye doctor for “seeing” life in a new way. Yep, I made my way-overdue pilgrimage to the great hall of sized alphabet lists and seats with all sorts of switcheroo gadgets that make you feel like your eyes are specimens brought home from a space mission to Neptune.

Wait!  This was a Covid-19-era appointment. My original appointment was canceled twice, including the original Covid scare six months ago.  Finally, at the first door of the clinic, I was met by the first masked interrogator. After passing the key questions except for the one on “shortness of breath” (asthma always makes me flunk that one) “Scotty” (my private nickname for him with his sci-fi thermometer) aimed at me with the magic thermometer and permitted me to enter the second set of doors. At the next desk, I gave all my vital information, then was told to return to door #1 as they wanted patients in this waiting room only 10 minutes ahead of time. Back to “Scotty,” a friendly guy probably in his fifties. Chatting with him during my five-minute “banishment,” I learned he came down with Covid two months earlier. He endured two weeks of utter misery, another two weeks of less misery, and was still feeling punk. I thought how surviving that misery especially qualified him for door duty.

“Scotty” had a chair and a book to while away his waiting time. Wise soul. A few minutes later, when I was granted permission to “check in,” I was taken to another “socially distanced” holding area. No magazines, no view except a construction wall, and the chairs spaced w-a-y apart.  With so few in this waiting room, I thought I'd be in and out. Forty-five minutes after my appointment time, I was ushered into the great skinny dim room with its weird exam chair for quizzes with the alphabet chart and drops that make your eyes yowl. Oh, the decor in such rooms.  Forget prints of Renaissance masters that please the eye. I studied a huge full-color chart describing macular degeneration.

Then came the eye doctor who got down to business with the “what's better, one or two?” lens contraption. The good news:  just a minor tweak so it's looking good for “looking good”' (the vision, that is, not the steady acquisition of gray hairs and wrinkles). Then came the bad news: they weren't doing the “un-dilate” eye drops any more. Did I have sunglasses? Good. In six hours my doe eyes should return to normal.

I had one errand at a drug store on the way home—an over-the-counter medicine. I wore sunglasses as I entered this store whose checkout clerk (a cheerful soul behind her plastic face shield) should have gone into stand-up comedy. When I went to pay, I told her that I was a movie star and was wearing sunglasses so that nobody would ask for my autograph. We had a good laugh. That was the medicine I needed that day, not the generic one in the little bottle I took home.

Yes, Covid has changed things. We're more suspicious and more impatient because things just aren't the way they used to be. I have to go back to “cool your jets” verses like these:

Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Corinthians 4:17)

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. (James 1:2-3)

Yes, I had a few inconveniences in the once-simpler process of an eye exam. But I still have access to eye care. I am still here to tell about it. And a sense of humor always helps!