So the alarm went off a 6:45 am this morning like it does every weekday. Usually I would turn it off and try my best to go back to sleep for another 45 minutes or so. Not today, I am pretty sure I didn't sleep 1 hour all night. I have a a sleep medication that almost always guarantees me 6 good hours of sleep, but that wasn't enough this time. So I got up, showered, wrote my out office reply, went and gassed up my car, had a Denny's Grand Slam waited for Alyssa to show up as she was my driver for after.
So I got to Kelowna a bit early so made a plan with the daughter so she wouldn't have to sit around and wait. Ironically that's the Ophthalmologists name, Dr. Chris Waite. I filled out some medical history stuff for reception and was immediately taken for my preliminary testing which was about 20 minutes. Then, like the Docs good name I waited and waited; 45 minutes had gone by then I get the call!! I am then directed to an exam room and directed to the "big chair", thinking that things would move really fast. BUT. I waited....and waited. you get the idea? Dr Waite came in with I assume a med student. He introduced the student and we talked about me. I thought this was cool, because usually they want your gone as fast as possible; or at least it seems that way to me. He did a very thorough exam and it wasn't always reading the same set of letters all the time. There were some other crazy tests that record what my eyes do in certain situations, so for the first time ever I got to witness what my eyes actually do when you do things like look up and down, side to side, lights on then off, then on slowly. So as he played it back to me he would show me what he would talk it all through, saying this is what isn't normal. Basically, I felt very at ease and comfortable. He told me that he think we need to exhaust all non-surgical options first as he felt the since my SCA is degenerative that surgery wouldn't help long term. So we need to fix this with Prism, and I jumped in a said I have prism it doesn't work he. Then gave me that serious look and with a deep voice he said "You need triple the strength of what you currently have." So of course I was like WTF! Why couldn't my regular optometrist figure that out? Well, he said most Optometrist don't even test for diplopia unless you ask, and even then they don't feel comfortable giving you anymore than a 1 or 2 power corrections (I hope I explained that right). So the part of you are all waiting for.......He started at a 6 then we tried and 8 so as you can see the higher the number the greater the strength of prism. So yeah, I am a 13. So he put a temporary stick on lens in my glasses and told me to give it about two months to adjust because my eyes having been seeing everything wrong for so long that you need a little longer to adjust. The change was about 80% better and he figures it will get better over time. I go back in August to follow up. The change was apparent but I tell ya, I felt a bit out of sorts (mind you, I always feel a bit out of sorts) like someone was pulling my eyes out of the side of my head. Off I went and hobbled out of his office and my natural reaction is to close one eye and have my eyes to the ground, but I forced myself not to do that and things definitely looked pretty good, not perfect, but pretty good!
I met up with Alyssa we had a lunch in the scorching Kelowna heat and she drove home. Surprisingly, I had both eyes open the entire way and never once felt I had to take the glasses off, except when I was using my phone which is normal. The sticker inserts look kind of funny but I don't think it is that bad, what do you think?
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