Help with eye doctor.?!
Question: I hve never been to an eye doctor before. Now, I am 16, I am having trouble seeing. My mom got me an eye doctors appointment and I don;t know what I should expect.Can you give me any websites or information about what going to the eye doctors is like! All answers are appreciated and best answer gets 10 points! THANX
Answers: I hve never been to an eye doctor before. Now, I am 16, I am having trouble seeing. My mom got me an eye doctors appointment and I don;t know what I should expect.Can you give me any websites or information about what going to the eye doctors is like! All answers are appreciated and best answer gets 10 points! THANX
I was the office manager for an eye doctor for seven years. When a new patient came in this is how we would do things:
We take patients into a small room, we ask them a few questions to get an idea of their medical history. Does anyone in your family have diabetes, glaucoma, macular degeneration, etc, etc?? These things all play an important part in the health of your eyes. Also if you smoke or drink, any medications you are on, that matters!
Then we took retinal photos. We ask you to put your face up against this machine, look at a picture and we snap several photos- this could take a few minutes depending on you, and the equipment. If you fidget a lot expect it to take longer!
Then we would do a "humphrey visual fields test" where we put a lens in front of you, you put your chin on a chin rest and while you are looking through a lens and into a tunnel type of thing lights will flash all around your head. We give you a remote to hold in your hand. When you see a light you will click a button on the remote. This test your peripheral vision because you have to keep your head in one place.
We also gave new patients a color vision test. You look at some pictures and tell us what you see. What color and what shape. Men are 7 times more likely to be color blind to some degree. A lot of people are color blind to certain colors and don't even realize it.
Then we would take our patients to the examination room. Depending on where you go it may all happen in one room.
The patient would sit in a big exam chair, much like a dentist and the doctor would have a machine that lowers in front of your face. He will put different lenses in the machine and have you read an eye chart. He test you with different lenses to see if you are near sighted, far sighted or have an astigmatism.
Near sighted means you can see things up close, far sighted means that you can see far away, and an astigmatism means that your eye is shaped like a football instead of like a basketball. With a misshaped eye the objects you view do not reflect off of your lens properly and they are distorted. That is why astigmatics have a problem.
I hope this answers all of your questions. Good luck.
P.S. Go to an O.D. places like Lenscrafters, Pearl Vision, etc tend to not be as good. You could see an opthamologist also but they aren't usually that great either. If an opthamologist can perform surgery but he's wasting his time with eye exams which don't bring as much money, then there is probably a reason!! He isn't a good surgeon! So see an optometrist, someone with OD after their name.
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It isn't bad. The worst is a machine that blows a puff of air in your eye. No pain just hard not to blink.
A routine eye exam is about the most benign exam you can undergo. The technician will put some drops in your eyes. Bring sunglasses with you, cause your eyes will be sensitive to light for a few hours after the exam.
They will give you the exam where you read letters from certain distances. Then there is the glaucoma test--a puff of air is blown into your eye. It does not hurt, just a little shocking at first. If they dilate your eyes, that is strange. That means they will actually forcibly dilate your pupils with eye drops. Your pupils will be huge which means tons of light will come in and your vision gets a little strange. Take some sun glasses in case--when you go outside it will hurt a little. And have someone drive you in case they do dilate--it is really hard to drive after that. You need to see an ophthalmologist not an optometrist. The first is more skilled and frankly better--they will check for diseases, not just vision issues.