# Anyone else find eye exams mildly stressful?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-find-eye-exams-mildly-stressful/996806
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [January 29, 2024, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-find-eye-exams-mildly-stressful/996806 "2024-01-29T12:54:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
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### Author: ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-find-eye-exams-mildly-stressful/996806/43 "2024-01-30T00:21:44Z")

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I don’t love them, for sure. And, being 64, post-cataract, and T2DM, I see the doc twice a year.

The refraction step (“Which is better, 1 or 2?”) varies from “yeah, 1 is waaaay better” to “Could I see them both again please?” because it’s such a near thing.

And there’s the field-of-vision test where you’re staring with one eye into a big white hemisphere where you have to click on a handheld remote whenever you see a light, no matter how faint. I’m always worried I’m missing something. The doc, last time, admitted that the thing is sometimes set up to trick you (e.g. going a long time between lights). Dunno if that one is strictly routine these days; as someone who’s had cataract surgery, and had somewhat elevated eye pressure before the surgery, I put up with it.

The worst part, fortunately very fast, is the shining of “BRIGHTLIGHT.OUCH.OW.OUCH.BRIGHTOWIEOWIEOWIE!!!”. I’m sensitive to bright lights anyway. I told the eye doc once “Well, at least if I ever quit complaining about that, you know something’s really wrong!”.

I actually quit going to my previous eye doc for a while because the step where they take a quick BRIGHTFLASHOUCHOUCH of the retina, which used to be with a “set your chin here and keep your eye open wide!” machine was replaced with a device that was attached to an iPhone! It was slower and much more accident prone - it was agonizing. IIRC, I finally went back to that doctor, and refused that step. The device would be great if you were in a place where the dedicated machine was not available - but that was NOT the case here.

> [@PatrickLondon](#):
>
> injected the anaesthetic

🫣  
No injected anesthetic for my cataract surgery, unless there were a LOT more drugs in my sedation cocktail than I was led to believe. Ditto for a friend who had a much more involved cataract surgery a few months later. Light sedation would NOT have done the job, if a needle had been involved. Injections are generally used much less commonly than they used to be, I gather. I have to wonder why on earth they’d need it???

[A longish thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cataract-surgery/816883) on the topic of cataract surgery, for anyone looking at this possibility.

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