Easy on the Eyes

At the Friends for Life conference this year, Dr. Ben Szirth and a team of eye care specialists from the Institute of Ophthalmology and Visual Science from the New Jersey Medical School provided free retinal screenings for people with type 1 diabetes for the seventh year in a row. But this was my first time being screened at the conference.

I saw quite a few different people who all looked at my eyes at various stations and with various impressive pieces of equipment. It felt a bit like speed dating, going from chair to chair and talking congenially with pleasant strangers.

The first technician performed some basic eye chart style vision checks, having me stand at a distance and read the eye chart covering one eye, then the other. Pretty standard.

The second technician took some pictures of my retinas for the doctor to review. He showed me the photos and explained what he was photographing.

My third station included an autorefractor that I've seen at my usual checkups - you're asked to focus on an image of a hot air balloon while the machine measures your specific vision correction needs.

My next stop was to measure my eye pressure. I believe it's actually called a tonometer, but I have always thought of it in my head as "the air puffer thingy." I've often seen my eye pressure in the borderline high range (normal is 12-22 mm Hg). I'm usually 18, 19, 20. I don't know that I've ever seen above 21. The day of this retinal screening? I was clocking in 24s, 25s. WTH? We measured it again. Same. Hmm. Not pleased.

It had been a rough night. I'd had a pod malfunction that had sent my overnight blood sugar into the 400s. I had taken a correction injection around 3am and decided to deal with changing out the pod the next morning. By breakfast, I was down into the high 200s, and by my retinal screening at 10:20am, I was still floating in the 200s well above my target range.

I was then directed to the machine that measures the thickness of your retina. I've been going to the ophthalmologist for 17 years and I had never encountered this piece of equipment before.

Dr. Ben stood nearby to review the results and explained to me that this was a $50,000 piece of equipment that many of his contemporaries told him was unnecessary to bring to a screening like this...but I am so glad we had it.

289.

My right eye has always been my well-behaved eye. My right eye has always had clearer vision, fewer hemorrhages, lower pressure. But my retinal thickness on the left measured normal (between 250 and 280) and it was my right eye that was cause for concern. 289. Let's check that again. 287. Damn.

So what does that thickness mean? That's what this machine was able to tell us. He studied the image, focusing on the big black bulge in the middle.