Being addicted to wearing my eyepatch, I wrote a story about a teenage girl who gets glasses and a patch. Sorry for mistakes, English is not my native language and it is my first story. I hope you enjoy the story. Please leave a comment if you like it, or don’t like it
My name is Natalie. I am nearly 14 years old and live in a very small village in the middle of nowhere.
I always thought I have good eyes and good vision. I never cared about that and neither did my parents. I never was sent to any ophthalmologist or optician. My parents sometimes say that I have a little squint, but it looks cute and it will go away when I grow. My mum sometimes calls me “Squinty” but I know she doesn’t mean any harm, I know it from the way she says it.
Well, I’m really growing and I’m so happy about it. I’m not a little girl anymore, and now everyone can see it! Nearly all my clothes I got last year are too small now, pants are too short, shirts are too tight. So on the first day of my school holidays my mum asked me to get up earlier than I wanted. She said she wanted to drive into town, which means a 60 minutes ride by car, and asked me to come with her so we could buy new winter clothes for me. Of course I wanted to go there, should I say no when someone asks me to go shopping with him or her? I would get up in the middle of the night if I had to. I love shopping!
When I got up this morning, mum said that she had made an appointment with her ophthalmologist for her annual checkup. She hates driving into town and wants to get as many things as possible done when she goes there. So she changed our plans a bit, first her appointment and then shopping. I did not mind to come with her; I knew that it is important for her to have her eyes checked regularly.
In the doctor’s office the waiting room was already packed when we came in. Mum found a chair near the window while I got one last free stool at the door. Everyone was leafing quietly through magazines so it was no problem not to sit near mum and not to talk to her. But, damn, I forgot my smartphone at home!! I just noticed it when I slid my hand down into my pocket to get it out and play some little game I had just downloaded. What a bummer! I looked around the room and thought, it may get boring here – there were about 9 or 10 other patients sitting there before mum and I came in. After reading a magazine for some minutes I got up and went to the lavatory to have a look at my hair. For going to town I had tried a very special braid this morning and I wanted to check if it was still ok.
When I came out again and closed the lavatory door, a very friendly medical assistant smiled at me. “You came with your mum, right?” she asked. I nodded. “Oh, poor you, it’s boring in there, isn’t it?” She pointed at the waiting room. I nodded again. Then she asked me if I want to do a vision test while waiting for my mum. “Why not”, I said. Better than sitting in there, reading boring magazines or watching old people nearly falling asleep. The friendly assistant had a little badge on her shirt. Her name was Christine Baker, and next to her name she had a little pink pony sticker. Nice, I thought and followed her into a small examination room.
Christine asked me to sit down on a white stool in front of a huge box. “Now put your forehead on this small plate, rest your chin down here, and look through these two holes into the box”, she told me. “What do you see?” I looked into the two holes. “A hot air balloon”, I replied, proud that I could see it well. “Good”, Christine said. She pressed some button on the box. The left hole went black and I could only see with the right eye. She pressed another button. “Keep staring at the balloon, no matter what happens”, she said. So I stared at the balloon and watched it coming nearer, going far away, getting very sharp, then getting very blurry. It was interesting, although I had no idea what was happening or why. But Christine must have been reading my mind. “There is some light inside the box that is reflected by your lens, and by this, the machine” – she knocked on its cover – “can calculate your prescription if your eye needs one.”
Oh. What did she say? Prescription?? I never thought about maybe needing glasses when I agreed to do the vision test! I felt hot and cold at once. Suddenly I wanted to get out of this room, back to the boring waiting room and the boring magazines and the sleepy old people. Calm down, Nat, I said to myself. Doing the test does not mean that I need glasses! And by the way, after all those years it might not be wrong having my eyes checked.
Christine pressed another button, the right hole went black and the left opened again. “Now we will do the same test with your left eye”, Christine announced. I heard the clicking of the button and the balloon started to move again. I wondered a bit why it looked so different when I used my left eye for watching it, but I did not think much about it. I thought maybe the tests are done in a different sequence for each eye to keep people from cheating. So I kept staring at the balloon, watching it getting blurry and clear. When the machine was finished, Christine looked at a screen on the back which I could not see. She startled, looked again at her screen and told me that she has to do the test for the left eye again. I did not mind, as it looked and felt so different maybe the machine was defective, or did measure the wrong things. Christine pressed the button and the balloon moved on.
Again the machine was finished, but Christine still looked puzzled. She pressed another button and the machine spewed out a small piece of paper that looked like a receipt in a shop. “Please wait here”, she told me and went out, holding the paper in her hand. “I have to talk to the doctor. I’ll be right back.” She went out of the room, closing the door behind me. So I got up from the stool and walked around the table to have a look at the mysterious screen. I looked at it and saw a lot of numbers, but neither did I know nor could I imagine what they meant. So I sat down again, waiting for Christine.
When she finally came back she looked a little worried. “I’m sorry to tell you, but you’ll have to see the doctor. He has to clarify if there is something wrong with your eyes or if it just was a wrong measurement. When your mum is finished with her checkup he will have a look at your eyes.” I could not believe what she just had said and got a little upset. “I think it was a wrong measurement”, I said. “The balloon was suddenly so blurry, can that be right?” “This is part of the measurement”, Christine answered. “That’s why I booked the appointment for you. You can go back into the waiting room, and when your mum is called up, just go in with her.”
I went back to the lavatory, feeling a bit dizzy. My face felt hot but when I saw myself in the mirror, it was totally pale. I let some cold water run over my hands, dried them with a paper towel, took a deep breath and went back to the waiting room. Luckily, the woman that had been sitting next to mum had left, so I sat down on the chair next to her. “Oh, Nat, where have you been?” Mum asked. “Did anything happen? You look so pale.” “I’m fine”, I managed to say. “A nice girl who works here offered to do a vision test with me, and then she said it might be better to see the doctor after your checkup is finished. So here I am again.” Mum looked at me, concerned. “Nat, I hope there is nothing wrong with your eyes. Although I know that a lot of kids become shortsighted at your age.” Oh no, I thought, I am not shortsighted. I can see everything fine. To confirm this to me, I looked across the room and out of the window. “Among my fifth-graders, three of them got glasses recently.” “Your fifth-graders are ten or eleven years old, Miss Teacher”, I snapped. “I am already nearly fourteen, so according to your logic, I must have been wearing glasses for some years now. Am I wearing glasses? See, that proves I am not shortsighted.” Mum just smiled at me. “14 is a great age”, she said politely. “When you are 14, you have understood the entire world. It’s just a pity that you will have lost all this knowledge when you are 30.”
I sat silently in my chair, my face turned away from mum. I was not in the mood to let her make fun of me so I just looked around, still trying to notice something abnormal. But everything looked as usual. Then I closed my left eye. It felt a bit different to see only with the right, but no problem with recognizing anything. Then I closed my right eye. And suddenly I felt sick. Seeing only with the left eye was definitely different. I opened the right eye again, then closed it – still the same. Oh my god, I thought, what is this? Is this the reason why Christine looked so worried and said I should go and see the doctor? I got up and grabbed a magazine from the little table in the middle of the room. I pretended to just flip through it, but again I closed my left eye and then my right. Seeing only with my right eye was ok again, but when I closed it and wanted to read with my left, I was horrified. I could not read with my left eye! How could it be that I had not noticed it before? There was no reason to only use my left eye, I explained to myself. And somehow I realized that when I had to use one eye, for looking through a keyhole for example, I intuitively used my right eye.
Mum noticed that something was going on with me. “Everything alright?” she asked. I nodded. “I know it’s boring here, Nat. But we should be next in line.” The moment she said that, somebody called her name, and we got up and walked into the consulting room.
I did not pay any attention when my mum was being examined. I constantly thought about what would be if my eyes were not ok. I did not even notice when she was finished. Suddenly a voice said: “And now to you, young lady – what’s your name?” I looked at the ophthalmologist, a huge man with grey hair, maybe some fifty years old. “Nat – eh – Natalie”, I stammered. “She’s a bit shy”, my mum explained. I frowned at her, but she pretended not to see it. “Sit down in this chair”, she said to me. I walked over to a huge chair and let myself fall onto it. “I’m Dr. Thompson”, the ophthalmologist introduced himself. “Your mum has great eyes, so let’s see if this is something you have inherited from her!” I tried a little smile. Dr. Thompson looked at the piece of paper that Christine’s machine had produced. “Christine did an automatic vision test with you?” he asked. I nodded. “This is the result”, he said and pointed at the paper. “It says that you might have a problem with your left eye. Did you notice anything before? Blurry or double vision? Maybe headaches?” I shook my head, but then I said: “Sometimes I think I see a bit double when I’ve been reading too long.” “Really”, Dr. Thompson said. “Good you said that. First I will do a standard refractive test with you, then I will check your near vision and your binocular vision. Ready?” “Ready”, I sighed. Somehow I felt trapped in this big chair.
Dr. Thompson switched some eye charts on a screen on the wall until a very big one appeared. Then he paused and turned to my mum. “Did you notice anything about Natalie’s eyes?” he asked her. “Well, she always had a cute little squint”, Mum said, as if she was talking about the flowers in the garden. “But we liked that, and it is said to sort itself out in time, so we did not do anything about it.” The doctor’s face turned pale, then red. “When did this squint appear first? I mean, at what age?” he asked. Mum shrugged. “Maybe when she was about four or five years old”, she said. “Mrs. Davis”, he said very quietly, “you should have brought Natalie here the moment you noticed it for the very first time.”
Then he turned to me again. “First I will test your right eye”, he said and pulled a pirate eyepatch over my left eye. “What can you see on the screen?” “A big four”, I replied. Dr. Thompson skipped some charts and stopped when a quite small chart appeared. “Can you still read this?” he asked. “Yes”, I said. “2,4,8,7.” “Very good”, the doctor said. “I can even read the next line”, I said proudly and read it to him. “Very good”, he said again and pulled the patch over my right eye. Suddenly the whole room looked somehow strange. He pressed a button on his remote control and the eye chart with the big four appeared again. I knew it was the big four, but it looked different from the big four that my right eye had seen. It was not really clear, it looked somehow sparkly, and small parts of the black print were missing now and then, but when I looked at them, they were there again and other small parts missed. Very strange. “So, young lady, what do you see here?” Dr. Thompson asked. “The big four again”, I said. “But it’s blurry.” Dr. Thompson switched to the next chart with two numbers on it. “This is also ok?” he asked. “Um… yes”, I said. “I see a 3 and a 9, but they are blurry too.” “Good, next one”, said the doctor and presented four smaller numbers on the screen. I hesitated a bit. What was that? 3-8-9 and what else? Maybe a 5 or 6? Damn, I could not see this, and I started feeling anxious. I tried to focus harder but it just got more blurry. The right eye behind the patch seemed to move when I tried to focus more. “Ok… 3 and 8”, I said slowly. “And 9 and 6.” “Have a second look”, Dr. Thompson suggested. “The first number is correct, the last too. But try to see what’s in between.” “Well, I see… 8 or 5? Or wait, it can be a 6?” “Okay, let’s pause here.” Dr. Thompson took the eyepatch off my head and pulled a huge machine in front of my eyes. “This thing here is full of lenses”, he explained. “I can put any combination of lenses in front of your eyes, and you simply tell me if it’s better or not.” He pushed some lever down, looked at Christine’s paper, closed the right lens and pushed the lever again. Something happened in front of my left eye – I was looking through a lens now and it was very different. Everything seemed so much bigger! “Can you read the numbers now, with the help of the lens?” he asked. “Yes”, I said and read slowly: “3-9-5-6. But they still are a bit blurry.” The lens was changed, and the numbers looked clearer and even bigger, but still far from perfect. A smaller chart appeared on the screen, and I was asked to read it. I could see two out of five numbers, the rest was not clear enough. But no matter what combination of lenses he tried, it did not get better than 20/200.
“Now your left eye can have a small rest”, Dr. Thompson said, closed the left lens in his machine and opened the right one. That was a very good feeling. Everything was clear and bright again! He looked at Christine’s paper again. “Your right eye might use some power too”, he said and pulled another lever, this time on the right side of the machine. “What about this?” “Wow”, I said, “unusual, but not bad!” He had me read the small numbers again, and I could read them without effort. If that was like wearing glasses, it was not a bad idea to try it, I thought.
Then he did the near vision test with me. It turned out that my right eye could read even small print, but it was much better and much more comfortable with another lens for reading. My left eye was hopeless and could not read too well even with the stronger additional lens. Nevertheless, he decided that I should wear this lens.
After that, he wanted to test my stereo vision but I failed even the easiest test. He gave me some kind of glasses which I had to hold in front of my eyes, and presented a test chart with one black circle in front of my left eye and one white circle in front of my right eye. I did not even see a bit of the black circle when I looked at the white one – obviously I could not use both eyes together. Then he covered my eyes alternately. I felt them moving behind the cover. “Yes, I can see the cute squint”, he said. “Oh yes. Your left eye goes in. But way too much to call it cute”, he said with a look at my mum.
He explained my prescription to me. I would need +0.5 in the right eye, with an addition of +2 for near vision. The left eye needed +3.25 with a +2 addition. The glasses would not be progressive lenses but made of two parts, divided in the middle. “You will love your reading add”, he said. “It will relax your eyes and it will reduce the eye turn. But we will still have to do something against the poor vision in your left eye.” He put some lenses from a big wooden box into a trial frame and handed it to me. I put it on my nose and looked through the glasses. Nice vision, I thought. Very relaxed. Better than without, but not perfect. The reading add was something I would have to get used to, but looking at my fingers, I saw that it might be a good idea to give it a try.
“Now about your left eye”, Dr. Thompson said. “It is much weaker than the right, I think you noticed that. You will have to strengthen it which is very simple, you just have to use it. It won’t see on its own because it is lazy, so you have to make it work. I will prescribe you a semi-transparent foil which will be stuck on your right lens. You can see through it, but for certain things you will have to use the left eye. Don’t worry, your eyes will decide which one sees, you don’t have to think about it.”
When we left the office I was devastated. I needed glasses! And not only glasses but very special ones, with a reading addition and a semi-transparent foil to make my left eye work more! Why in the world did I have so bad eyes – and never noticed it?? And the doctor said that my left eye turned in – I never noticed that too, but what if everyone else had already seen it? Ah, that was why mum called me “Squinty” sometimes. I always had thought it was one of those cutie nicknames, like parents call their kids ‘pumpkin’ or ‘button’.
My mum and I went shopping but I was not in the mood for shopping. Finally I managed to pick some new winter clothes and a nice pair of boots. I even did not argue with mum about the length of skirts or the height of boots. All I could think about was my eyes. I felt even worse when we stopped at an optician’s to choose frames for me. I found some frames I liked, they were caramel brown and nearly rectangular. I thought they looked great on me, the color went well with my hair, and the size matched exactly my face. Perfect, but on the other hand I hated the simple thought of wearing them. There was a nice woman who served us, and it seemed that I was not the first teenage brat that needed glasses and did not really want them. She had a very kind way of talking, she described everything nicely, and in the end I was convinced that I would get beautiful glasses. Before we left the shop, the woman showed me a brown piece of foil and simple over-the-counter readers. The glasses had a silver rim and a sticker with “+3” on one lens. She put the piece of foil on the right lens, quickly trimmed it to the shape of the frames and handed it to me. “If you want to do something for your eye”, she said, “wear this. For reading, at home, whenever you like. It will help you until your glasses are ready.” “Good idea”, said mum. “You really should wear it. When will the glasses be ready?” she asked the nice woman. “They are quite special, so I think it will take three days”, she answered. “As you live quite far away, you should call me before you take off. Here is the number”, she said and pointed at some lines at the bottom of the order confirmation. Then she looked at me again. “I know it’s embarrassing to run around with an eyepatch, but please, really try to wear it. It will be good for your vision.” “Yes, thank you”, I murmured and at the same time I thought, no, never will I wear this! Maybe the glasses, maybe for reading for my sake, but not more, and not with this silly brown patch! I took the glasses, put them on my face and looked into a mirror. I quickly pulled them off my nose again. It looked horrible, and my vision was a mess. Never would I wear those darn glasses! “No problem if you don’t like them at once”, the nice woman said. “Believe me, you will get used to them.”
The problem was just, I did not want to get used to them.
…to be continued!