Before the viral scare, I saw an eye doctor.
Not something worthy of celebration to most, to me, it’s an enormous pat on my own back because of Fear.
I have an Eye Thing.
It’s real, it’s a thing, this Eye Thing, and doctors suffer from my squeamishness. Even the thought of someone nearing my eye makes me flush hot and sweat. I early hyper-ventilate.
Past eye docs did not appreciate my combative gestures,
My son wears glasses and because I’m a good mom, I drug my boy into a doctor’s office for an appointment he had less-than-zilch interest in attending, This local doc is the best eye pro for my boy. Calm, soothing, ready to distract with a humorous story.
Bubs was so entertained, I thought, this might be the One for Me. I, too, could easily fall for his Look Over Here methodology.
I scheduled an appointment.
Remember the glaucoma test, the little tiny puff of air that shouldn’t bother anyone but I know for a fact that it does indeed bother others as much as it does me? (Perhaps not a whole lot of folks, but at least a recordable percentage.)
Well, a tiny woman tried to give me that test and I mentally boasted, “I can take her.”
Not my finest moment, and after the fifth or sixth time of her puffing the air to a face that had left the chin rest tiny moments before the air hit its target, she got the idea that perhaps she was not the one to administer this particular time.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Lots of people have trouble with this test.”
Hence, she was my source for all that scientific data about lots of people having my particular eye issue.
With generous numbers of apologies, I moved from the pre-emptive trials to the gauntlet itself. The doc. The pro. The one who loves my kid and may not be fond of me at all in a mere half hour.
He sensed my unease, perhaps the clenched fists, bobbing knee, and muttering helped with his diagnosis.
Enter: the distracting story. Humorous, dramatic, effective.
No eye drops, only A or B a million times behind the strikingly cold robotic mask of lenses; you know the one.
No talk of dilation, either, thank heaven, after I told him I needed to drive to fetch my child, the Bubs he knew and appreciated.
BUT.
“Okay, I’m going to check for glaucoma,” he offered.
“The hell you say,” I accidentally blurted.
Not my finest moment, but the next few moments would be full of less than stellar behaviors.
The test wasn’t a puff of air — nope — it was a tuning fork apparatus to directly touch the eyeball.
And because I didn’t want to be hauled out of the office in cuffs, I held all my tension within. I was a rock. A vibrating, humming, gyrating rock.
I leaned as far back as leather upholstered chair headrests allow, and still the doc pressed forward until at last his penetrative fork made contact.
But I was not as smooth as I mentally pictured, because I realized my hands had come up in a chopping motion, my left knee pulled upward and planted into a rib.
Flexibility comes with high tension.
I apologized, “I don’t know why my hands need to be in this position, but they do.”
He laughed.
This, my friends, indicated that he was my eye doctor soul mate.
He asked if he should continue, and I boldly said, “Do it.”
And he did, after I’d again positioned into combat form.
We are still friends, can you believe it? I’ve never not once been able to say that about any other eye care professional.
Plus, this one doesn’t keep a two-thousand-yard berth and a wary eye upon me when he sees me in public.
Score.