For most of my adult life, I have tried to spread out doctor appointments so I had them throughout the year and not bunched up together. For once-a-year appointments, I know they say to make them around your birthday so you don’t forget, but I would do various holidays to remember to schedule them. It’s rare that I have a lot of appointments at all once unless they are all for the same issue. For example, when I had blood work for my MRI one week, my MRI the next week, and my follow-up appointment the week after. Even during the pandemic, I’ve been trying to keep things spread out when I have the option to do so.
But for some reason, this month is going to be filled with various doctor appointments. Some of these were scheduled already, some are ones I have been waiting for a referral for, and some are ones that I realized I needed to do and just scheduled as quickly as possible. And last week, I kicked off a month of appointments with one that I tried to schedule as quickly as I could. And that was to get my eyes checked.
The last time I got my eyes checked, it was at the beginning of the pandemic. It was right after everything in LA had shut down, but I still had my appointment to go to. It was very weird and eerie because I knew we were supposed to be staying home, but I also needed this appointment because I was out of contact lenses and couldn’t get more without seeing a doctor. If I didn’t need to go for that reason, I would have stayed home. And I remember how everything just seemed off. There weren’t cars on the road because people were staying home. I’m used to seeing a ton of people in the waiting room and there was nobody there. Everyone was being hypervigilant and I was worried that being out for that appointment was maybe too risky.
That appointment was over 2 years ago, and contact prescriptions are only good for 2 years at a time. So when I realized I was almost out of contact lenses again, I knew it was time to schedule my next appointment. I know that I probably should be a bit better about trying to go 2 years apart instead of something like 2 years and 6 months, but I also know that these appointments are mainly to confirm my vision hasn’t changed. Of course, it’s important to have other eye health checked out, but the appointments I schedule are mainly vision checks.
Even though the pandemic is very different now than it was in March 2020, a lot of what I experienced at this appointment was the same. I scheduled it to be very early so I could go before work and not be late to log in. There weren’t too many cars on the road and there was nobody else in the waiting room. But I think the lack of patients in the waiting room was more about how early my appointment was and not because people aren’t going in for their appointments.
I expected my vision to be the same and for there to be nothing much to discuss with the doctor, and I was right. I did have a little trouble with the vision test because wearing a mask while doing it meant the little lenses in the machine would fog up quite a bit. I was having to wipe them off every time I looked through them to say if version one or two was better for me. It wasn’t too annoying because the doctor and I both were laughing a bit about how ridiculous it was. It did make the appointment take longer, but not by much.
When the eye exam was done, I went to order new contacts and I got a spare pair of contacts that were a different brand because I had told the doctor that I was wearing my last pair. I didn’t intend to let things get like that, but I didn’t realize I was out of contacts until I put in my last pair. I thought I had another box left and panicked a bit when I realized I was wrong. But at least now I have some backup ones I can use if necessary. But the ones I ordered should be arriving in another week or two.
I’m glad this appointment went well. Some of the other appointments I have coming up this month are a bit more stressful or I’m worried about how things will go. I know everything will be ok, but I still get stressed about the possibility of finding out something weird at an appointment. But at least for this first one this month, it was very routine and easy and I’m hoping this is a trend that will continue throughout the month.
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