The Eye Doctor

I went to The Eye Doctor yesterday. I have been to different ones on and off for almost 20 years now. The one single thing I always hated before this was the dreaded puff of air in the eye. The great news was that they didn’t do that at this place. I was in heaven!

I arrived early (as directed) to find everyone except a optician named Helene (pronounced “Helleen”) there. Everyone else was at lunch. I imagined the rest of the staff at a sports Bar throwing Darts and slapping each other on the back and ass-grabbing.

I waited 20 the minutes that I was supposed to have spent getting there early for paperwork; reading Entertainment Weekly and listening to Helene and the whale of a sales lady running down the engorged list of products she was hawking.
It went like this;

W: “Want number 102”?
H: “Yes, twelve of those”.
W: “Want number 42”?
H: “What’s the specs. on those, I need details on these and what are they made of”?
W: “That’s on the flyer in your hands”.
H: “Oh, so it is”.
W: “Want number 103”?
H: “Yes, twelve of those”…

I was looking at the edge of the pages in the magazine and wondered if they were sharp enough to slit my wrists when finally; the receptionist appeared! My heat soared as I approached the desk five minutes later when she called me.

She asked for my “referral” and um, crap…I left it in the car. Be right back. I rode the slowest elevator known to man 7 floors down to the main level and out to the parking lot to get the paper.

I toyed with the thought of having a smoke, since I had already been waiting over a half hour. I didn’t have one and just gathered the parchment and headed back to the office.

Once there, I was given the stack of papers to fill out. Shortly after I started, an Oriental gentleman appeared near me and was filling out the same paperwork. I noticed he finished each sheet with a flourished flip and I became competitive. If he finished his paperwork before me, he might get to see the Doctor first! I went into overdrive writing like I did in 5th Grade, everything abbreviated and as legible as my scribbles in kindergarten. I won. I went first.

I was called by a kid who I thought must be a real prodigy to be a Doctor so young. He turned out to be the assistant. I went through a series of “tests” and not a single one was explained to me. I finally asked the kid who he was and he explained his “station” in the office. He left me alone and I immediately started playing with the machines in the room and when I got bored, got up and started reading the six diplomas on the wall.

I like to do this to every new Doctor I visit, just to send the message to these people that fake certificates will not fly here in the US.
Dr. Kato appeared (not his real name) appeared shortly and caught me inspecting his wall coverings. We shook hands and he went straight into the examination, no small talk.

Things started off pretty normal, looking at my eyes with different gadgets and after about 10 minutes, he has my prescription filled out and completed. Wow, I thought this was fantastic. I wasn’t done, not by a mile.

Kato pulled out this yellow fluid and just told me to look up at the ceiling. I hate drops in my eyes, but after a few punches and a headlock, he got them in. They burned. THEN he pulls out this toy that looks like a shotgun on a swivel and points it into my right eye. I was blinded by the light shining and he kept moving this thing closer and closer until he actually made contact with my eye.

Ok, I don’t like things touching my eye or my eyelashes; they are very sensitive, by design. Needless to say, I was writhing around in the chair like a mental patient.

Once the torture was over I was sent to visit with Helene. She gave me a “mock-up” of the new prescription and immediately started a hard sell on some really fancy lenses. When she brought up my medical coverage, she started searching her broken ass computer to verify mine. It didn’t come up with anything, so she had to back off the hard sell for now and gave me a bunch of papers to read over before I came back to see her once I had my coverage figured out (like I will).
Then she said, “I have to dilate your eyes”.

I had a mental visual flash of this hag flashing me, which would at the very least have dilated my retinas, maybe to the point of blindness.

Instead, the witch pulled out two more eye droppers and asked me to look at the ceiling. Once again, I was doing something I hate more than needles and broken bones.

I was sent to wait, unable to read the many papers I had, because my vision was blurred by all of the eye drops. Eventually the kid came to check on me as I stared blindly into space. I was cooked.

He took me back into the torture chamber to wait for Kato, who appeared shortly and asked me to get off the floor and stop cowering behind the chair.

I sat back and was shackled into the chair while Dr. Kato positioned the next round of torture instruments in front of me. The time, it was a device similar to a bazooka with a beacon that can be seen from space on the end of it.

As Kato pointed the device directly into the center of my brain, he asked me to open my eyes as wide as possible and look at the ceiling. I was fine until he had the tip of the blinding beacon so close to my eye that it was tapping my eyelashes and triggering involuntary blinking.

Kato shortly decided to hold my eyes open manually, much like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. It only made things worse. As I lashed out at him, he used his Ninja moves to block my attacks; I was pinned in the chair and helpless.

I gave up and he had me looking up, down left and right like I was at the Air Show watching a stunt plane race. All the while, he was blinding me with the immense beacon on the end of the bazooka. I writhed as much as I could, to no avail.

I was close to losing consciousness when it ended and I was set free. Certainly Kato was happy with my level of torture. Now I only had to go drop off the $25 co-pay and when I asked about validating the cost of the parking. Carol, behind the desk, pointed to the little sign that read “We don’t validate Parking”.

Feeling like I had just been gang raped, I left the office, sniffled my way to my car and paid the $5 parking fee before I was finally out and headed to the Mountains of Austria!