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January 25, 2006

Public Service Announcement

Have you had your eyes examined lately?

Because mine had been relatively unchanged and frankly because it's not part of my insurance plan, I skipped a year.

I went back to my doctor in September of last year, who noticed my pressure scores had been slowly creeping up. The pressure test is the one everyone loathes where a machine blows a small puff of air at your eye. It isn't painful but it's like waiting for someone to throw a pie at your face. My readings from a few years ago were between 14 and 16; they were creeping up to 19 and 20 - just below a risk for glaucoma. He sent me a letter a short while later asking me to come back in three months just for the pressure test and kindly kept the price for a single test to $10.00. The results had shot up again to 22 and 25. He referred me to Dr. Roy Cohen, an optometrist who specializes in glaucoma for a full workup.

I took a battery of tests over the course of an hour. None were awful, but you don't easily get accustomed to someone touching your eyeball, however gently. The worst test is a field analysis test, which lasts 30 minutes. You sit with your head enclosed around a screen where very faint dots of light are projected and press a button each time you see one. It isn't remotely painful, but it is boring beyond belief and after a few minutes you aren't sure if you're seeing lights or your optic nerve is just firing from the fatigue.

Happily, the tests so far are normal but I'm at risk for glaucoma and need have frequent exams to make sure things don't deteriorate. The reason I'm mentioning this publicly is that there were no symptoms. No change in vision. No headaches. Not even a family history of it. Nothing. The only way to detect this at an early stage is with an eye exam. So go, please. Glaucoma causes blindness if untreated.

Better people than I have ranted about the availability of health care in the United States, so consider this sentence the obligatory rant. If you can't afford an eye examination, there are organizations that will screen for glaucoma for free.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Posted by Leigh Witchel at January 25, 2006 6:25 PM

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