A slightly less than pleasant experience became a nightmare. Despite my meditation practice, although I know how thoughts can run away with me, my mind had taken over and wreaked havoc. While my loss of vision could have been caused by medication I'm taking, the most likely cause was stress. I needed new contact lenses, but that was it. There was no change in my eye wear prescription. In fact, problem areas showed some improvements. The evidence was clear: my eyes were fine, or at least as well as my eyes can be. He pointed out areas of previous concern. He compared prior test results to the current results. After 45 minutes of testing and waiting, I was called back into the room. His assistants took photo after photo of the interior of my eyes. He put those dreaded dilating drops in my eyes and we chatted about our kids, my yoga practice, his outside the office routine. Let's take it step by step." He checked this and that. His response to my panic is to become calmer: "We have a lot more tests to do before we talk about what's going on. I've been with him since he opened his practice. This optometrist is one of the calmest people I know. Those numbers melted into pools of characters in a foreign, unrecognizable language. Forcing myself to see made matters worse. You won't be blind today." All these thoughts and more spun wildly through my mind. More appointments." "What will it be like to be totally blind?" "Don't be stupid. I had done poorly on charts before, but nothing like this.
#SPINNING WHEEL PAINTED RUNNING SHEEP FULL#
It took about 10 seconds for full blown panic to arise. The best I could do was read the large "6" at the top and that was more of a guess than a certainty. I could not read a single line of numbers on the chart. Then we switched to my left eye and the fun began. We began the first test - "Read the rows of numbers." The vision in my right eye wasn't too bad and I felt some relief.
"What will be wrong this time?" was the continual thought loop. It's a struggle to remain calm.īy the time I was called into the doctor's office, my mind was racing. I feel my body tighten up as I wait for my turn in the chair. I worry about what might happen days before I'm in the office. (The dear doctor prefers to think of them as "interesting challenges.") Although my optometrist is kind, and very skilled, the thought of all the tests required at each visit makes the appointments stressful. My doctor has dubbed my eyes, "Designer Eyes," a clever euphemism for eyes which don't work well. Yesterday, I was in my optometrist's office for a long delayed check up. I've been catching up on medical appointments this month. When the villagers found him, they noticed a large branch from a tree had fallen across the road, near where the man's body was lying. Down the man went, dead of a heart attack. He planned his escape from these snakes: would it be better to run away from the snakes on the road or should he jump in the river and take his chances at out-swimming them? As his mind raced, he came around a bend in the road and there it was - the largest, most fearsome looking snake he had ever seen. All his previous encounters with snakes came back to haunt him. They come up out of the river." The man continued his journey, but looked for snakes everywhere he thought they might be - behind him, in front of him, along the banks of the river.
There are venomous snakes along that path.
When the man came to the next town, the villagers warned him, "Be careful of the road beyond. Once upon a time, a man who was terribly afraid of snakes was walking along a dusty road beside a river.
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