Visiting the Optometrist
Finally decided to write something without GPT-4o’s help.? I feel empathy for these LLMs - they will never be able to experience the emotions and feelings that we as humans experience with something as routine as an outing to meet our eye doctor. ?
Every year I go through this ritual in visiting my optometrist to get my eyes checked.? It’s motivated mainly by not-so-subtle admonitions from my wife. Yes, I squint occasionally when browsing my iPhone, or when trying to decipher the protein content on food labels.? And she never lets me use my hawk eyes (in spite of me being an Iowa football fan) to help dispense the right dosage of medicine to anyone.
My eyesight in reading labels with tiny words has deteriorated these past few years but I can read them fine if there is enough light.? Thank god for the iPhone flashlight - it’s truly been a beacon of sight for me.? Did you know that with iOS 18 you can adjust both the brightness and spread the light with simple swipes?? And you can easily access the flashlight itself by clicking the icon in Control Center. ? On my laptop, Command++ is my favorite pair of keys to enlarge the font on most screens except in Notes where one needs to use Shift+Command+. ? Am I laying it on too thick with the Apple advertising?? With GenAI and using the front-facing camera to scan my pupils, will we get to a point where it auto-adjusts the font size without any keystrokes on my part?? That would be an amazing invention.
When I start the examination, the nurse practitioner takes me through some initial tests.? I enjoy that screening test where one needs to click every time one sees a flickering flash of light.? It’s almost like a video game and I ace it as I have for the past few years.? And after a retinal scan, my ophthalmologist takes over. ? He smiles at me grudgingly since he has been trying for more than three years to get me to buy some reading glasses.? We go through the eye exam where I need to read letters with one eye closed and the other open. ? My right eye is not as strong as my left eye but he makes the mistake of using the same set of letters for both eyes and starts with my left eye. ? I don’t have eidetic memory like Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory but can remember a line of 5 letters easily. ? At this age, I actually cheat on an exam - something I last did possibly in my 5th grade.? My dad always used to say - “It’s fine to lie as long as you are not hurting anybody”.
He then shows me the screenshot of my retinal scan - amazing to see the plethora of blood vessels and the optic nerve.? Truly in awe of how much in-sight (pun intended) one can glean thanks to huge advances in medical technology. ? He gave me a clean bill of health with respect to macular degeneration and glaucoma and said I had 20/20 vision.? He then makes me go through an exercise of trying on lenses of different strengths and seeing how it improves my vision.? I must admit I can definitely read small letters more clearly with those lenses in front of my eyes.? I did wonder and voiced my concern whether?such accoutrements deprive my eyes of the “exercise” (what my wife would call strain) to get more resilient and avoid further atrophy.? He stated that use of the lenses would not in any way degrade my eyesight. ? Being able to look at him eye-to-eye (though not sure if he was wearing contacts), I did not see his ears get red or his nose get longer - he might be telling the truth.
I ate a lot of carrots when I was young (and not just because I was a Bugs Bunny fan) and have always been proud of my exceptional eyesight.? But this is the bane of getting older. Is vanity in play here? Do I not want to showcase my age to the world?? But my grey hair is a dead giveaway so not sure that is a compelling reason.? There are friends whom I have not seen for a while who remark “Your hair has turned grey”. ? My first impulse is to respond with sarcasm “After all these years, I am still amazed with how you have such mastery of the obvious” but I instead tell them that I dyed it grey to appear wise when I teach and forgot to read the label that said it was permanent dye.? ?
Am I putting people’s lives in danger with my reticence to wear reading glasses? I don’t think so.? Somehow built into my psyche is the fact that glasses will make be dependent on them.? But age also brings in its wake experience and wisdom. I will keep my focus on this issue (pun oh so intended) and maybe succumb to picking up a pair of glasses in the near future.