In Which Jo Goes to the Opthamologist and Gets All Steampunk On Your Ass....

...and reviews a beer. A really mediocre beer. A sex-in-a-canoe beer. In a word, Dundee: Avoid.

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So I went to the eye doc today. This is a fraught event for many reasons, least of which being that, when my eyes get dilated, they *stay* dilated for 24 hours or more. I was dreading the dilation and the feeling of being totally bat-blind while in public and then of having no close vision while at work in the morning. (And no, I don't know why my eyes stay dilated. I stayed stoned for 72 hours the only time I tried smoking weed, and I can't tolerate narcotics. Must be something inside.)

Technology, thankfully, has caught up with us bat-blind people. My doc has this new thing called an OPTO-MAP (ACQUIRING TARGET: RANGING: HIYA BABY) that requires no dilation to read a 200-degree map of your retina. It takes about thirty seconds and totally rocks out: there's a bright green light that blinds you for a brief moment, and then look! it's your photogenic retinas on the computer screen!

I must say that I have very cute retinas. My optic nerve is darling, as well.

Anyway. The ratio of my optic disc to optic nerve is five-point-nine when it ought to be five or less, but it's the same in both eyes and hasn't changed lately, so I've not got glaucoma. Yet. Likewise, my vessels aren't tortuous, and that little freckle in my left eye disappears with different color screens, so it's not melanoma. I was absolutely certain that missing an eye appointment last year would land me in the "horrible incurable eye disease we'd better just take that out right now hold still" camp, so this is good news.

However, my eyes are still bad. As in, really bad.

As in, the lenses for my new glasses (which I have not replaced in a decade at least) cost somewhere north of shocking and somewhere south of a mortgage payment.

It's bad news when the therapeutic optometrist who's in charge of fitting you with glasses ixnays all your choices for frames on the grounds that they would be too large. Not because you would look matronly, but because your vision would be impaired with the type of lenses you need.

So I have itty-bitty constipated librarian glasses with a mustard-yellow and turtle-green Pucci print on the frames, and horrifyingly expensive toric prismed carbon-fiber super-thin technologically magnificent lenses that will do everything but my laundry for a good three to four years.

Which means that they'll only cost me between one-and-a-half and two bills a year to wear.

*sigh*

You will be pleased to hear that Practical Nurse Jo refused the thick-templed glasses, the glasses with jewels on the sides, and even an adorable pair of frames with orange-red miniature rhinestones on them which rocked her world, just so she could look professional in case she has to wear glasses at work.

Pictures forthcoming. On my old cruddy digital camera, as I now have no money to buy a new one.

*sigh*