you know what's kind of annoying? when a doctor says you see 20/20 but

you had to concentrate real hard to make out what the blurry letters
were, but you guessed right.

 

Yeah.

 

Chances are you didn't just guess right.....
Think of the odds that you actually didn't get any clues from your
vision and simply guessed the last two letters. The odds that this
would occur by chance are (1 / 26) * (1 / 26) = 0.00147928994 ~ 1/1000.
Even though the chart doesn't use all 26 of the letters in the
alphabet, most people don't know that, so the odds of getting one
letter correctly by chance alone is 1/26.

The point is kind of moot if you are happy with your vision, there is
no pathology, and the doctor did a good job of refracting you. Even
with all of this I can see where you are coming from, could be a little
frustrating.

 

But if you told your doc "I had to concentrate real hard to make out
the blurry letters" your doc would not say you are 20/20,would he?

 

no, i told him they were blurry and he didn't seem to care that much...
then again, i said it kind of quick ... i didn't expect him to really
care...

basically, i had had an eye exam about 6 months ago but wanted to get
anotehr brand of contacts. He said tehre would be a fitting fee, but
then he checked to see how i was seeing in the contacts.

20/20, but the letters were blurry.

I guess I should have been more assertive, but I didn't feel like
dealing with it.

 

This is exactly what happened to me four years ago. My vision went
totally haywire, almost overnight. I went to the GP, and you're not
going to believe this but at least try:

He asked me to read the eyechart. As soon as I looked at it even the
top line was very blurry. So I cheated, I knew that somewhere in my
brain I was "seeing" aright so I just rattled off what came intuitively
and scored perfectly on the bottom line! The doctor said, "You have
better eyesight than me." Moron. I mentioned this to a friend of mine.
He said he knew of a Professor Bodis Woolner who had documented the
same thing in a number of his patients but I have been unable to find
any reference to it.

 

But if you told your doc "I had to concentrate real hard to make out
the blurry letters" your doc would not say you are 20/20,would he?

Sure he would. At least, some would. Some docs will refract you and,
when you look through the resulting glasses and things are still
blurry, say "you have to get used to them" (I did; they're still
blurry) or "maybe that eye isn't dominant" (it's not dominant, but I
used to focus binoculars through it without any problem), or whatever.
It's frustrating.

dealing with it.

Be prepared to get a lot more assertive.
*sigh*

LD

 

As my first OMD told me, the Snellen test is imperfect. Still, it's the
best tool they have. You go down the lines until you can't see the
letters. Of course the last one will be blurry. The point is to find
the best correction possible. If you aren't correctable to something
close to 20/20, then it's time to look further. In my case it was
cataract.

 

If you're not assertive, you're doing yourself an injustice. You can
always find a new doctor.

 

well, i don't have eye insurance either, but i'm about to get it soon,
but it would have been extra to actually get a new prescriptoin


I was also in one of those "mall places" ... i have a hard time taking
those places very seriously, wrongly or rightly, so when i get
insurance i will look at some non-mall places.

 

that's a good point and true... I guess I'm more annoyed by the fact
that they're calling what I see normal 20/20 because I can make out
some blurry letters. Then again, I guess that's the whole point of the
eye exam where they go "better, worse, no change."

 

Everybody's visual systems are different, and there are different
degrees of "normal."

DrG