Catching Ducks

I have bad vision. Bad, bad, so-near-sighted-I-can't-read-a-book-without-my-contacts vision. Recently I went to the eye doctor for a check-up. He did that eye dilation thing while I was there. He put the drops in my eyes, and then stepped out for a couple of minutes while the drops did their dilation thing. When he came back, he said, "Things starting to look a bit blurry?"

I'm all, "Starting?"

He laughed, and explained that most patients report blurriness after having their eyes dilated. Of course, once I put my contacts back in, I did indeed notice that everything within a few feet of me was blurry. But without my contacts, I couldn't tell the difference!



Since my vision is so bad, I've often wondered what exactly my eyes were in terms of the 20/20 scale. 20/100, 20/200, or what. My contacts are labelled "5.0" and the doctor referred to them as being "five hundreds". I asked him if that meant my eyes were 20/500. I thought that sounded like sufficiently poor vision. He was like, "Umm, no. The two have nothing to do with each other. The big 'E' is 20/500."

I'm all, "What big 'E'?"

Seriously, I can not read the big E. I do see a vague suggestion of parallel lines, but that's it. So, I still don't know what my vision officially is, but apparently it's much, much worse than 20/500. Yikes!