The Dentist Saga Continues
There we were, the five of us, me, Sophie, Gabby, Mackenzie, and the exam tech, held up in the examination room, looking for any reasonable indication that our time there had culminated, when Sophie’s dilation drops began to take effect; this was just as the lady was finishing up Mackenzie’s testing. It was then that I felt the curtain of impending doom close in on me!
Sophie was getting just as upset as Gabby was about the newly inflicted blindness, and began to scream, and quite loudly would say, “I can’t see! I can’t see!” then she turns to the poor tech, who is ready for therapy at this point, and says, in a pitiful and hurt voice while crying…“why did you do that to me?”
I don’t know if it’s standard practice, if it’s because it was a sunny day, or because the tech was feeling an enormous amount of guilt; but for some ungodly reason she decides that this would be a terrific time to hand the girls their examination room super prize…wait for it…big, huge, “old people” sunglasses.
You know the ones that are so big that they can go over any pair of eyeglasses. They are meant to protect your eyes from the sun when you get dilated; what they accomplished was adding insult to injury for the twins who were now mad that the lady gave them sunglasses that did not fit their tiny little heads.
So now, as we were leaving the room and heading down the hall to the “dilation room,” Gabby is still yelling “why are my eyes blurry, why are my eyes blurry,” Sophie is complaining “I can’t see, why did you do this to me…and why did you give us these stupid too big glasses,” and Mackenzie, still, is just bouncing all over the place…while trying to adjust the new glasses to fit the girls face.
Right here I would just like to say that it is completely ridiculous how eye doctors handle the whole dilation thing.
The room, you know, the place where you are supposed to rest for a minute while your eyes continue to freak out, and while you are waiting for the eye doctor; is usually full of magazines, you know…for reading, and a television, you know…for watching. The very two things that are completely impossible for a human being when their eyes have been dilated!
I think this is part of how they can tell when you’re ready to see the doctor. If they come by there and you you’re looking at a magazine, or watching the TV, you need more time to cook.
However, if you are staring at the floor or squinting at the TV like Dirty Harry in a Clint Eastwood movie…You’re done! Well, I was done, the girls were past done, and I was ready to give my precious little wife a good piece of my mind!
The Doctor came into our third room and was pretty great. All in all the final stage of our adventure went off without a hitch. We got the lens prescriptions, said thank you to everyone in that part of the building, and made our way over to the place where you choose the frames.
Have you ever done this with two “fuzzy blind” emotional six year olds? It was a complete nightmare!!! Imagine, putting a set of frames on a little girl, who is a total wreck, and whose eyes are extremely blurry; and standing her in front of a mirror to see what she looks like. Now tell her that this is what she will look like from now on if she chooses these frames. Yeah….yeah it was stupid.
After another hour I finally got smart and just chose two pairs of frames and left. This little revelation came to me after I asked Gabby why in the world she didn’t like a certain pair of frames I was holding in my hand; and she looked up at me with huge tears in her eyes and yelled out…“cause I can’t see them!” Bless her heart.
The lenses had to be ordered so we headed home, and would have to come back to get the completed glasses. As we climbed into the Jeep, and tried to get the oversized sunglasses to stay on the twins’ heads, they had just one really big question to ask me; “Daddy, why didn’t those people give us our new glasses?” I know… after all of that, I was wondering the same thing!
Jason, father of six