This July, both Connor and I went to visit a new eye doctor (since our old one stopped accepting our insurance). The tl;dr version: Connor didn’t get glasses right away, but he did get them. Also, I got progressive lenses (aka multifocals).
At the end of last school year, the school nurse sent us a letter stating that Connor had failed the depth perception test and part of the hearing test, and suggested we get him evaluated. Of course, just as I was going to make him an eye appointment…
…he got hit square in the eye with a locker door at day camp.
Unfortunately, this happened on the 3rd of July, when we were planning to go see fireworks for the first time as a family (which we hadn’t done yet since dusk comes some two hours after Connor’s bedtime). He wasn’t in a crazy amount of pain, as far as we could tell, so we didn’t take him to urgent care or anything right away. It wasn’t until after we’d done the bathing and the brushing of teeth and had come back downstairs to chill until time to leave — then the wailing really ramped up, and we decided a pre-fireworks visit to our local urgent care was in order.
Sure enough, he’d gotten a scratch on his cornea, right on the pupil.
The physician on duty prescribed him some antibiotic eyedrops, and we were on our way to fireworks just in time, with plans to pick up Connor’s script at the 24-hour pharmacy on our way home.
(I’m not mocking my child’s pain in this photo, I promise.)
Alas, after we’d found the not-so-secret field of free parking (we’d never gone to see these particular fireworks before) and set up our chairs and gotten out our glow necklaces, the numbing eyedrops from the exam wore off and Connor appeared to be in excruciating pain. So, with just ten minutes to spare before the fireworks started and law enforcement would have blocked off the most direct way out, we packed up and headed first to the pharmacy, then home.
Two days later (the next day being a national holiday), I called up our soon-to-be new optometrist’s office and made a follow-up appointment for Connor (as recommended by the urgent care doc) and an eye exam appointment for myself, while I was at it.
The eye doctor confirmed that Connor did still have a small scratch above his iris, with the part over his pupil having already healed. We scheduled him a regular eye exam for the following week, and left the follow-up appointment with instructions to continue the antibiotics as prescribed.
As for the routine eye exam… Connor wanted glasses so bad that I suspect he tried to throw the exam on purpose. In the end, it looked like he’d benefit from glasses, but his answers to the doctor’s questions were so inconsistent that the doc couldn’t justify issuing a prescription. We ended up scheduling another exam for January.
Fast-forward a few months into the first quarter of first grade. Connor’s teacher was trying to get him to rate whether his worksheets were easy, normal, or hard — and he kept saying they were hard. Not because they were difficult to figure out, but because they were difficult to see.
At Connor’s well-child exam, I asked the pediatrician to check his eyes with their fancy gadget. Sure enough, he rated as waaaay nearsighted. So, I made him another appointment, during which he told the truth and answered all the questions, and he was rewarded with his first pair of glasses.
We picked them up just this morning. He LOVES them (so far).
Then there’s me.
I had started noticing that the text on my phone wouldn’t come into focus, and I had trouble reading fine print. After my routine exam, the doc prescribed me progressive lenses: basically, no-line trifocals.
That made me feel old.
The first few days with the progressive lenses were rough. (The drive home from Optical was especially weird.) Now, though, I adore my progressive lenses. Since I had them put the lenses in a pair of frames I already had, and our vision insurance is pretty bomb, I got my new fancy glasses for an excellent price.
So, now we’re a fully-bespectacled family. If we were only a bit memorable before, we’ll be way memorable now, what with our matching glasses and all.