I’ve never done that. Huh. Do they only do it if they think you are at risk of something? I’ve been to a lot of ophthalmologists…
Mostly i think it’s just so they can do the whole exam at the same time. One doctor claimed that that way he knew my “real” correction. But what matters is what correction is functionally best, not what correction best matches the shape of the eye at rest. And you can’t test the function when the muscles have been paralyzed. I always thought my correction was a little better when it was done without dilating the eyes.
I’ve done the field of vision test at my current clinic, but I don’t think I did it elsewhere. When I’d previously had my eyes dilated, they checked my vision and determined my prescription first, put in the dilation drops, let me sit awhile (I assume they did another patient’s exam), then came back in to finish the exam.
ah, when he dilated my eye, i went in the waiting room and waited for it to take, so yeah, there had to be a break there. i was there a long time. it’s a good thing nobody else was waiting.
when i looked at the reviews, the only negative thing that was said repeatedly was that you would wait hours to see this doctor because he spends too much time with each patient, but everything else they said about him was so overwhelmingly positive that i just figured oh well, i’ll have to give up half a day of work for this. turned out, i didn’t have to wait behind anyone else. my own appointment took forever though. it took a really long time to figure out exactly what i needed for the piano stuff though and then i had to wait like a half hour for my eyes to dilate.
Yup. As you get older, the eye gets less flexible, and your range of vision gets smaller. You always had some nearest point where you could focus, but when you are young that is so near you never look at stuff that close. The correction pushes out the whole range, both the near and and the far end. And as your get older, if you push out the “far” vision far enough to focus at infinity, you can’t focus up close. Thus “reading glasses” for people who never needed glasses, and less correction for people who needed a far correction.
When i got to that point, i tried progressive lenses, which gave me headaches, and i could only see out of the center (right to left). I tried bifocals, which mostly worked, but have this awkward line in the middle of my field of vision. And i tried using multiple sets of glasses. Which is a nuisance.
Then i found digital progressive lenses. And now that’s what i wear all the time. There’s way less distortion side to side when i move my face.
I have no idea about ophthalmologists, but I think it’s pretty standard fare for optometrists. I’ve only ever seen an emergency ophthalmologist when I had something lodged in my eyelid. Can’t think of any other time I’ve seen one so I don’t know what non-emergency ophthalmologists do.
But basically every optometrist I’ve seen in the last 20 years or so has done one, and having moved around and then having an optometrist retire and another who didn’t take my insurance when it switched, I’ve seen quite a few optometrists. And maybe the earlier optometrists were testing for the same thing a different way, but based on OldTimer’s description I think that’s a newer test if I’m not mistaken.
I had some retinal issues over the last few years, which is why I’ve seen a lot of ophthalmologists. (Starting with the resident on call late one night, and eventually moving up to the senior retinal specialist, and then bumped back down to less senior retinal specialist when they decided it needed to be treated. And then off to a non-retinal-specialist when the retinal issues resolved and i had some other weirdness.)
For a while i was getting my eyes dilated every week or two. That’s a joy. I am not a fan of getting my eyes dilated. And then I’d go back to the office and strain to focus on the screen to work.
People with the following conditions should be monitored regularly by their ophthalmologist, who will determine how often visual field testing is needed:
Central nervous system problems (such as a tumor that may be pressing on visual parts of the brain)
Stroke
Long-term use of certain medications (such as Plaquenil, or hydroxychloroquine, which requires yearly visual field checkups)
People with diabetes and high blood pressure have a greater risk of developing blocked blood vessels in the optic nerve and retina. They may need visual field testing to monitor any effects of these conditions on their vision.
I get tested for glaucoma every time i walk in the door. Like PCP’s always check your blood pressure, ophthalmologists always check the pressure in the eye, even if they just did it last week, in my experience. They numb the eye and then tap it to explicitly measure the pressure. That may be why they haven’t bothered with the field of vision test.
Yes. I did this for a few months through a binocular vision clinic at uwaterloo.
It was fairly strenuous, not as easy as you might think. Trying to focus on stuff that you can’t focus on.
They wanted me to do a half hour a day, every day. After a few months it was just too much. I just got my prescription changed.
No loss though, they said I could restart anytime.
Examples of exercises:
A 2m strimg with three beads with on it. Focus on bead 1,2,3,2,1 etc
Stand back a couple meters and look at a block of letters through 3d glasses.
Hold a pen about a foot from your face and then move the pen around.
didn’t know this. i knew that as i got older i might need reading glasses, but didn’t realize every focal point gets screwed up too, but that makes sense.
my current lenses are progressive supposedly, but i find the progressive feature to be entirely useless. you have to look too far down in the lense to even use it at all. i don’t read that way ever. thus useless. i take them off to read. I really don’t think I need reading glasses yet, so the progressive feature was truly a waste of money. My left eye is pretty good for reading and bad for everything else a tiny distance more away. the progressive feature doesn’t give me headaches though. it simply doesn’t work for me, at least based on where they placed that feature in my glasses. progressives are expensive too, so i’m happy to ditch that feature if I get a 2nd pair of my regular distance glasses. not sure about those digital progressive lenses, but whatever progressive lenses I got were expensive and also useless.
I’m envisioning this one contact being a nuisance. wish there was a glasses option for what i want to accomplish.
nope, i wish. just having one side of the glasses with a prescription and the other none supposedly puts my eyes “out of balance” according to the ophthalmologist, so I cannot do that. I need a contact to put it in balance if I want perfect vision. apparently only contacts can give perfect vision due to how different my two eyes are. somehow my right eye seems perfect for the piano distance though, so i only need one contact for that rather than two.
So, the knee still hurt over the weekend and I had trouble putting in socks and getting up from the floor. A couple people suggested it could be a torn meniscus. I will get it checked if it still bothers me next week. But no real pain in the last 24 hours. Of course I haven’t done anything like putting on socks—yet.
I have what a doctor once told me was chronic tendonitis in my knee. From time to time it hurts a lot doing normal stuff: getting off the couch, stairs, any sort of bending in the gym or at sports. But then it goes away. It can last for anywhere between 3 and 9 months and be gone any where for 6 months to 2 years or more. (I’ve been dealing with this since my beach volleyball days back in the 90’s.
Went to the doc in early 2000’s and he told me it was chronic tendonitis and there really wasn’t much I could do about it except some ibuprofen.
It does, but from what I’ve been reading it could happen. Anyway I can walk and I’m traveling this week so if the pain doesn’t return in a major way I’m letting it go.
