musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Let every eye negotiate for itself


She was just another old person waiting in the tiny cubicle to have her eyes examined at the optometrist. There were only three seats available; the rest of the office was dedicated to displaying ocular frames, and current items offered on sale; the walls were plastered with posters of happy-looking models delighted with their choices of glasses. People of all ages milled about asking loud questions to helpful employees about the advantages of each variety -presumably they had done their time in the little cubicle and were now free to try on various shapes and colours of eyewear.

Thankfully, the cubicle and the only other occupant, an elderly white-haired lady in a blue woolen dress, were quiet and safe in the eye of the storm blowing all around them. It was no doubt designed as a place to sit and consider what brought us here, our shelter from the stormy blast, but hopefully not our eternal home -although I was sure she was humming the hymn softly to herself when I arrived: a cat purring.

I suppose it was a fair option to pursue: apart from some advertising pamphlets on a tiny table in the middle, there was not much to do -no 20 year-old Macleans magazines stacked messily on the table, no tattered Better Home and Gardens issues to riffle through. Without having cultivated the habit of pulling out a smartphone and scrolling through its apps when they were bored, an old person would feel lost, and the weight of the wait would begin to tell on them after a while. She seemed content, though; her eyes were closed and her bony hands gripped the arm rests of her chair as if they, at least, were real.

She must have realized she was no longer alone because her eyes suddenly opened and the humming stopped when I inadvertently scraped my chair as I settled in and scanned the table for something to read; pulling out my phone seemed rude for some reason: the cubicle was not a bus, and since she had not evinced a phone, I was certainly not going to destroy the karma.

Her face was expressionless at first, but I sensed a curiosity in her body language, as her grip on the arm rests relaxed. She blinked, stared at me for a moment, and then apparently reassured that another elder like herself posed no immediate threat, glanced around the busy room for some other place to rest her now-opened eyes. I wasn’t sure just how much she could see of the bustle outside though, because she kept blinking as if she were trying to bring it all into focus. But, after all, we were both in an optometrist’s office for something, eh? And her pupils were widely dilated as if she found me particularly attractive, or more probably, had just had some of those dilating drops put in her eyes.

I thought it was a good time to open a conversation to wile away the time. I tried for a non-committal comment to start things off -something we older folks probably had in common, especially at an optometrist’s office: glasses. “I used to wear thick, heavy glasses, when I was young…” I left the sentence uncompleted to give her a chance to compare notes, but she only blinked in return. I wasn’t sure if that was a memory wandering through her brain or a rejection of my attempts to connect, but I carried on anyway. “Then, when I aged out of my job, I had my cataracts removed and now ‘Bob’s your uncle’, eh?” I added the outdated expression to reassure her that I, too, was old -although not as mellow as she seemed.

Curious, she fixed me with her huge pupils and semi-smiled in my direction. “Then why are you here?”

I took the question to indicate that she wanted to engage, so I shrugged. “Something to do with a lump hidden on my…” I couldn’t remember the word ‘retina’, so I had to improvise. “…well, something close to the back passage in the rear anyway…”

“Pardon me?” she said, shocked, as if she couldn’t believe anyone would joke like that with a senior.

I wasn’t sure why she was reacting like that until it suddenly dawned on me. Then I blushed. “I’m afraid it was a word I made up for the back part of the eye where the light ends up… I forget the correct word sometimes.”

She blinked several times in a row and then almost smiled. “The retina you mean?” She seemed relieved when I nodded. “Forgetting words sometimes happens to me nowadays too,” she added with a sigh. “It’s usually when I’m a bit stressed… Age is not without its trials is it?”

I nodded. “You going for glasses…?”

I could see her trying to repress a sigh to be polite to someone she’d rather have ignored. “I’ve got a few medical issues so they like to check my eyes every 6 months or so.”

I stifled an urge to ask her about her ‘conditions’; something like that requires a quid pro quo first, though. So I nodded again as a hint that I, too, had a few afflictions I could barter for information about hers. “I used to have extreme myopia, and that apparently is a risk for… I quickly tried to remember the word again –retinal detachment and things.” Then I shrugged politely to show her that Age had not left me unravaged either.

Her lips relaxed into what I thought might be a wrinkled smile. “I suppose we can’t expect to stay healthy for ever…”

I detected a purposeful ellipsis and took it as a signal for me to agree with her. “You’re right. Something’s gotta take us down, eh?”

Her eyebrows joined the furrows on her forehead. “I’m not that old, young man.” She tried to focus her unfocusable eyes on me for a moment. “How old do you think I am…?”

Another ellipsis -she wanted an answer; I could flatter her and under-guess her age, or stall for time until somebody called her in to see the optometrist. Instead I suggested we trade secrets. “You go first; then I’ll tell you mine…”

She smiled at that, hoping no doubt to impress me that she actually looked much younger. She took a deep breath as if to steel herself, and then, either to astonish me, or focus on me more clearly, said “I’m in my eightieth year!” That out of the way, she nodded at me to top that.

My problem is similar, but perhaps more problematic in a way. I look younger than I should. So I sometimes say it is a curse when people tell me how young I still look. When they inevitably ask what is so bad about it, I refer them to Oscar Wilde’s book ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ -his story of a dissolute young man whose appearance doesn’t seem to change with time as much as a portrait of him does, and he stores the evidence of the immorality of his self-absorption in the attic so no one can see it. “Don’t look in my attic,” I’d tell people -although I can never remember if that’s what Dorian actually does with it.

I sighed, and prepared myself for the inevitable reaction. “I’m in my 82nd year…”

I’m sure I only imagined it, but I could swear her pupils actually contracted for a moment. “I’m surprised,” she managed to say just before the optometrist invited her in to her office.

I was disappointed, though – mainly because I didn’t get a chance to tell her about my curse…

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gozzter

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